11 ms·

I've used both mysql and postgresql and they worked just fine for my needs. But I have always been curious: how does postgresql (or even mysql) stack up vs pro

I've used both mysql and postgresql and they worked just fine for my needs. But I have always been curious: how does postgresql (or even mysql) stack up vs proprietary databases like Oracle and Microsoft sql server?

manigandham 9y ago
For 99% of standard SQL, they all work the same today. The commercial databases are still faster since they have more advanced algorithms and optimizations, as well as better scale out options and tooling - but Postgres is quickly catching up and will be fine for the majority of scenarios. Postgres also has better general usability with robust JSON support, CSV handling, foreign data(base) access, lots of extensions and other features that help make it a powerful data platform. Today the real difference will be for companies that have some combination of existing Oracle/Microsoft tools and services, advanced clustering needs, complex security requirements, or a dependency on the more advanced features like MSSQL's in-memory OLTP.
zitterbewegung 9y ago
The tools to access Microsoft SQL server are really good since they have Visual Studio based tool. MySQL workbench is almost at that quality but I'm not sure what a Postgres alternative would be.
- manigandham 9y ago
  DBeaver is highly recommended: https://dbeaver.jkiss.org https://dbeaver.jkiss.org
  - LeonM 9y ago
    Better link to the official website: https://dbeaver.com/ https://dbeaver.com/
    - manigandham 9y ago
      That's the enterprise/commercial version which recently has a cost involved. Worth it for the nosql access.
- benjaminjackman 9y ago
  IntelliJ Ultimate has pretty good built in tools as well that handle a lot of different dialects. I've used MSSQL and PG with pretty good results, e.g. code complete that uses the db schemas is really nice to have when exploring databases.
  - teilo 9y ago
    Look at JetBrains DataGrip - the standalone tool for DBs. IntelliJ's tools are a derivative of that.
  - noir_lord 9y ago
    Aye, Ultimate is a no brainer if you are a polyglot, you get nearly all the singular ide's in one.
- the_rosentotter 9y ago
  For a web interface, especially for data browsing/editing, TeamPostgreSQL[1] is the best I have used for any database. [1] http://www.teampostgresql.com/ http://www.teampostgresql.com/
- bdcravens 9y ago
  I've been using DataGrip for both SQL Server and Postgresql for over a year now, and am very happy.
wehadfun 9y ago
I feel like Microsoft SQL server is the easiest to use and has the best tooling. I would say that MySQL and Postgres are generally ok to use I slightly perfer MySQL tooling. Oracle seems to be the most different one but once I got use to it it was ok.
- enraged_camel 9y ago
  >>I feel like Microsoft SQL server is the easiest to use and has the best tooling. Agreed. SQL Server Management Studio is fantastic and is one of the main reasons I enjoy working with MSSQL. Unfortunately Postgres severely lacks in the tooling department. PgAdmin 3 used to be good, but PgAdmin 4 is simply horrendous. It makes me dread interacting with Postgres.
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    pgAdmin 3 still exists and afaik remains compatible with newer Postgres releases. You can still use it. Postage, a tool developed by a family of software devs, was gaining popularity but recently became unmaintained without explanation (afaik). [0] I started using IntelliJ DataGrip on a trial basis and it's good, but I probably won't pay for it. Sick of paying monthly subscription fee for every little tool I need from JetBrains, especially when I put down a project and don't need that tool for another x months. Used DBeaver briefly but it's so many clicks just to set up a primary key that I shelved it for now. Will probably come back to it when DataGrip trial is over. Not a conventional management tool but pgModeler [1] is a cool project IMO. Open-source, but they put a limit on the Windows binaries they distribute to try to get people to fund development. Can build from source yourself, install on Linux, or probably find free third-party builds elsewhere. I think that most devs are just sticking with pgadmin3. [0] https://github.com/workflowproducts/postage https://github.com/workflowproducts/postage [1] https://pgmodeler.com.br/ https://pgmodeler.com.br/
    - kuschku 9y ago
      You can just buy jetbrains' tools, you don't get updates, but you can always use them. (Specifically, if you subscribe even once you get the latest version, and can use it forever, even if you unsubscribe)
anonetal 9y ago
Aside from tooling, those systems often perform much better than PostgreSQL for large queries or transactions, as they feature much better optimizations. Even outside of newer optimizations like "columnar" storage, several of those systems do code generation from queries to avoid function calls, branches, etc., which can have huge performance implications. I worked on the internals of PostgreSQL once, and the number of function calls in the innermost loops were very high. PostgreSQL also used to be (is?) single-threaded, which limited performance of a single query on multi-core machines -- I haven't looked into it to see if there has been any fundamental change in the architecture in the last 4-5 years.
- Tostino 9y ago
  Yes there has been. This release expanded it significantly.
- grzm 9y ago
  > PostgreSQL also used to be (is?) single-threaded, which limited performance of a single query on multi-core machines From the submission: "Improved Query Parallelism - Quickly conquer your analysis" Query parallelism was introduced in 9.6 and expanded in 10.
  - anonetal 9y ago
    Yes, I was just reading through that. The server is still single-threaded though -- they are getting the parallelism by starting multiple processes to do independent chunks of work. This makes sense for PostgreSQL, but has some fundamental limitations (e.g., it requires duplicated copies of a hash table to parallelize a hash join).
    - halayli 9y ago
      PostgreSQL uses shared memory, it doesn't copy the hash table.
      - anarazel 9y ago
irrational 9y ago
We've recently moved from Oracle (after using Oracle for 15 years) and we have found Postgresql's documentation to be superior to Oracle and the SQL dialect to adhere closer to the standard and to make more sense (Oracle has been around for a long time and has a lot of old and non-standard SQL built in). Overall things are simpler yet everything runs as fast or faster than it did on Oracle. Better price, better performance, better documentation, better SQL, better install process... what's not to like?
- kuschku 9y ago
  > yet everything runs as fast or faster than it did on Oracle. Be careful with that statement, Oracle’s license disallows users of the database from making benchmarks or any kind of performance comparisons (another reason to move to PGSQL) EDIT: Source that refers to the ToS: https://stackoverflow.com/a/12116865 https://stackoverflow.com/a/12116865
  - SomeHacker44 9y ago
    Sure sounds like they're an ex-user of Oracle and not a user. :)
  - vkjv 9y ago
    If they are no longer using it, would the license still apply?
    - 7265626F6F74 9y ago
      Even if they are an ex-user of Oracle products, they would have had to benchmark the software at a time the were using it or have someone who is using it benchmark it. Either way a benchmark would be made at some point while an Oracle product user, which taking kuschku's word for it, is against the license agreement.
      - mjw1007 9y ago
        Looking at the license agreement, it doesn't prohibit running benchmarks and recording their results, so if you ask me they wouldn't be breaking the agreement at the time they were bound by it. (Of course nobody in danger of getting involved in a court case with Oracle is going to be asking me.)
mohaine 9y ago
The warts from a dev perspective: 1) Oracle is really lacking in modern features/usability. Features where frozen in roughly 1999 and they are pretty still the same (mostly). (You are STILL limited to 30 chars for a table name FFS). They do add new stuff from time to time but anything existing isn't modified. Works but not fun to work with. 2) MSSQL needs NOLOCK everywhere (I've seen codebases with this on EVERY query). The default locking really sucks. I'm sure a DBA can make the locking sane system wide but I've never seen this on any of the DBs I've worked with. Also, SQL Manager is a PITA IMHO. Toad it is not. Almost all DB interactions via a 1G windows only install is a "bad idea" 3) MySQL is nice but will just silently eat your data from time to time. Auto truncate is evil, as is missing enums. These have both hit me multiple times in production. Note: Not sure if this is still the case since I avoid it now for this reason. 4) Postgres. Lots of nice features and easy to work with but the optimizer will sometimes do something silly. Sometimes you have to cast your bound variable just use an index. (id=? => id=?::NUMBER just because you do a setObject in jdbc)
- gnud 9y ago
  For the MSSQL locking, you should probably change the transaction isolation level instead of using NOLOCK everywhere. I think it's a horrible wart that you have to do that for every session, though. The default can't be changed.
- adzm 9y ago
  Change the mssql translation to run in read committed snapshot to get similar behavior to Oracle. NOLOCK is usually a bad idea.
- skissane 9y ago
  > (You are STILL limited to 30 chars for a table name FFS). In the latest release, 12.2, the limit has been increased to 128. https://docs.oracle.com/database/122/NEWFT/new-features.htm#GUID-64283AD6-0939-47B0-856E-5E9255D7246B https://docs.oracle.com/database/122/NEWFT/new-features.htm#...
  - mohaine 9y ago
wenc 9y ago
I cannot comment on every single aspect of Postgres vs MSSQL, but there are a few things I like in MSSQL that I don't believe exist in Postgres: 1) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) - the default GUI is a decent free front-end that integrates well and lets you do advanced stuff like graphically live-profile queries (live execution plans), easily setup security, build indices, setup various things like linked servers, compression, etc. Although I'm a text-editor sort of person, I don't have SQL syntax memorized for infrequent tasks like creating indices so a GUI (or an IDE) can really help productivity in these instances. Postgres's default GUI, pgAdmin is comparatively weak, and the good ones are third-party payware. 2) Columnar indices - MSSQL has a fairly good implementation called columnstore indices, which creates a derived column-oriented data structure which speeds up analytic queries quite a bit. 3) Speed - SQL Server is very performant and optimized, and doesn't choke on very large datasets. Postgres is decent, but on my datasets it doesn't seem to be very performant. Also, MSSQL locking is a boon and a bane. It's not the best for environments with high contention, but it is ok for most analytic database use cases. On the other hand, Postgres' MVCC (and oh the vacuuming) can be annoying.
- starik36 9y ago
  What are the good third-party payware GUIs for Postgres? I've looked and never seen any that came anywhere close to SSMS, much less SSMS + SQL Prompt combo.
  - mappu 9y ago
    I use HeidiSQL for MySQL, it seems to support Postgres.
  - wenc 9y ago
    There's Navicat. Datagrip is on its way to becoming really good, though it still has some issues. There's a whole list here: https://postgresapp.com/documentation/gui-tools.html https://postgresapp.com/documentation/gui-tools.html (I use the free Apex Refactor with SSMS and it makes editing SQL a pleasure)
    - 9y ago
ianamartin 9y ago
I cut my teeth on Oracle when I was first getting started in technology. All I did was write ad hoc queries all day long. My next DB heavy job was using SQL Server, where I built an analytics engine to do bootstrapping for sparse datasets. After that I used it to run the back-end data layer for a credit card processing company. I used MySQL at a different finance company that was doing similar things but at a smaller scale. Ever since then, I’ve been using Postgres. Based on that experience, I’d rank them in this order: 1. Postgres 2. SQL Server 3. Oracle 99. MySQL Postgres often lags behind the others in features, but the dev team chooses their battles wisely and ends up with better implementations. Postgres is a real beacon of light in the open source world. Solid community. Many projects claim the benefits of open source, but they are never fully realized. Also, because Postgres is not operated by a freemium model, you always have access to the latest and greatest features. The extensibility is fantastic and well-leveraged by the community. I’ve never experienced a case where Postgres tried to figure out what I was doing and decided to do the wrong thing. Postgres fails early and loudly when there’s a problem with what I’m asking it to do, which is exactly what I want it to do. I don’t ever want to have to second guess the integrity of my data. I haven’t run explicit benchmarks between any of these databases. But when I do similar things across two different systems, I feel like they are generally on par. But like I said, I can’t prove that with any numbers. There are probably specific work profiles that people can come up with that would show better performance for one platform over the other. But I don’t think there’s a realistic difference in performance in general. Not one that’s big enough to push your decision. The real moment of revelation though, is when you find out that you can run your preferred programming language inside of Postgres. When you actually get to the point that transformations are outside of what you want to do in SQL, and you can just write a Python function and have it execute inside your database instead of having to do I/O, process the data, and then push it back . . . it is life-changing. The only reason SQL Server isn’t tied for first place is because of the lack of extensibility and because it’s expensive to use in production. But it is rock solid, and has some nice things that Postgres doesn’t have, like hinting queries. Again, the Postgres community has discussed this, and it may never actually happen, but there are reasonable points as to why not. But it is really handy in SQL Server to be able to guide the query planner on the fly like that. SQL Server has also had solid pub-sub for a long time, though we’re getting that now with this version of Postgres. I’m not a huge fan of Microsoft in general, but you absolutely have to give them props for their tooling. There is nothing even close to SSMS for any other database system. It is by far the gold standard for a visual interface to you data. Obviously, if you’re throwing down money, you’re also getting a certain level of support for the product. I’m not convinced this should be a deciding factor between Postgresand SQL Server because, again, the Postgres community is amazing. I should also point out that there’s a free version of SQL Server that will suffice for the needs of a great many people. It’s features are limited (no pub/sub, and there’s a size limit on your total dataset), but it’s totally functional for a lot of use cases. Even though I use Postgres for everything in production, I will always keep a PC around to run SQL Server for one off things that are just easier to do there. Oracle is mostly fine. I was so new to everything when I was using it that I probably can’t speak that well to its strengths and weaknesses. Other people who have used it more recently can probably do it better than me. I just can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would pay their prices when SQL Server and Postgres exist, unless it’s for the support contract. And where I’m kind of meh about Microsoft, I’m actively against Oracle and Sun Microsystems. I’m pretty sure that Larry Ellison’s personal model is, “Just go ahead and be evil.” But that’s kind of a tangent and not really all that relevant. MySQL is a different animal. It has a different design philosophy than the others. It’s more like MongoDB in principle than the others are. It’s main goal is to be friendly to the developer. And to entice you into upgrading to the paid tier. Which is all fine. But one consequence of that is that it tries really hard to succeed under any circumstance, even if “success” means corrupting or losing your data. So it fails rarely, late, and quietly under certain conditions. For that reason, I don’t think of it as even being in the same category as the other three. As in, it would never be an option for me, similar to MongoDB. I want my dev tools and programming languages to be focused on the developer. And I want my data store to be focused on my data. I think that this is a fundamental and deadly flaw with MySQL. Different use cases have different requirement though, so your mileage will vary. I’m an incredible pedant about data integrity because the work I do requires it. There are legitimate cases where it just doesn’t matter all that much. But in terms of feature parity and performance, they are all pretty close in general terms. Each will have specific cases that they really excel at and have been optimized for.

manigandham 9y ago

For 99% of standard SQL, they all work the same today. The commercial databases are still faster since they have more advanced algorithms and optimizations, as well as better scale out options and tooling - but Postgres is quickly catching up and will be fine for the majority of scenarios. Postgres also has better general usability with robust JSON support, CSV handling, foreign data(base) access, lots of extensions and other features that help make it a powerful data platform. Today the real difference will be for companies that have some combination of existing Oracle/Microsoft tools and services, advanced clustering needs, complex security requirements, or a dependency on the more advanced features like MSSQL's in-memory OLTP.

zitterbewegung 9y ago

The tools to access Microsoft SQL server are really good since they have Visual Studio based tool. MySQL workbench is almost at that quality but I'm not sure what a Postgres alternative would be.

manigandham 9y ago
DBeaver is highly recommended: https://dbeaver.jkiss.org https://dbeaver.jkiss.org
- LeonM 9y ago
  Better link to the official website: https://dbeaver.com/ https://dbeaver.com/
  - manigandham 9y ago
    That's the enterprise/commercial version which recently has a cost involved. Worth it for the nosql access.
benjaminjackman 9y ago
IntelliJ Ultimate has pretty good built in tools as well that handle a lot of different dialects. I've used MSSQL and PG with pretty good results, e.g. code complete that uses the db schemas is really nice to have when exploring databases.
- teilo 9y ago
  Look at JetBrains DataGrip - the standalone tool for DBs. IntelliJ's tools are a derivative of that.
- noir_lord 9y ago
  Aye, Ultimate is a no brainer if you are a polyglot, you get nearly all the singular ide's in one.
the_rosentotter 9y ago
For a web interface, especially for data browsing/editing, TeamPostgreSQL[1] is the best I have used for any database. [1] http://www.teampostgresql.com/ http://www.teampostgresql.com/
bdcravens 9y ago
I've been using DataGrip for both SQL Server and Postgresql for over a year now, and am very happy.

wehadfun 9y ago

I feel like Microsoft SQL server is the easiest to use and has the best tooling. I would say that MySQL and Postgres are generally ok to use I slightly perfer MySQL tooling. Oracle seems to be the most different one but once I got use to it it was ok.

enraged_camel 9y ago
>>I feel like Microsoft SQL server is the easiest to use and has the best tooling. Agreed. SQL Server Management Studio is fantastic and is one of the main reasons I enjoy working with MSSQL. Unfortunately Postgres severely lacks in the tooling department. PgAdmin 3 used to be good, but PgAdmin 4 is simply horrendous. It makes me dread interacting with Postgres.
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  pgAdmin 3 still exists and afaik remains compatible with newer Postgres releases. You can still use it. Postage, a tool developed by a family of software devs, was gaining popularity but recently became unmaintained without explanation (afaik). [0] I started using IntelliJ DataGrip on a trial basis and it's good, but I probably won't pay for it. Sick of paying monthly subscription fee for every little tool I need from JetBrains, especially when I put down a project and don't need that tool for another x months. Used DBeaver briefly but it's so many clicks just to set up a primary key that I shelved it for now. Will probably come back to it when DataGrip trial is over. Not a conventional management tool but pgModeler [1] is a cool project IMO. Open-source, but they put a limit on the Windows binaries they distribute to try to get people to fund development. Can build from source yourself, install on Linux, or probably find free third-party builds elsewhere. I think that most devs are just sticking with pgadmin3. [0] https://github.com/workflowproducts/postage https://github.com/workflowproducts/postage [1] https://pgmodeler.com.br/ https://pgmodeler.com.br/
  - kuschku 9y ago
    You can just buy jetbrains' tools, you don't get updates, but you can always use them. (Specifically, if you subscribe even once you get the latest version, and can use it forever, even if you unsubscribe)

anonetal 9y ago

Aside from tooling, those systems often perform much better than PostgreSQL for large queries or transactions, as they feature much better optimizations. Even outside of newer optimizations like "columnar" storage, several of those systems do code generation from queries to avoid function calls, branches, etc., which can have huge performance implications. I worked on the internals of PostgreSQL once, and the number of function calls in the innermost loops were very high. PostgreSQL also used to be (is?) single-threaded, which limited performance of a single query on multi-core machines -- I haven't looked into it to see if there has been any fundamental change in the architecture in the last 4-5 years.

Tostino 9y ago
Yes there has been. This release expanded it significantly.
grzm 9y ago
> PostgreSQL also used to be (is?) single-threaded, which limited performance of a single query on multi-core machines From the submission: "Improved Query Parallelism - Quickly conquer your analysis" Query parallelism was introduced in 9.6 and expanded in 10.
- anonetal 9y ago
  Yes, I was just reading through that. The server is still single-threaded though -- they are getting the parallelism by starting multiple processes to do independent chunks of work. This makes sense for PostgreSQL, but has some fundamental limitations (e.g., it requires duplicated copies of a hash table to parallelize a hash join).
  - halayli 9y ago
    PostgreSQL uses shared memory, it doesn't copy the hash table.
    - anarazel 9y ago

irrational 9y ago

We've recently moved from Oracle (after using Oracle for 15 years) and we have found Postgresql's documentation to be superior to Oracle and the SQL dialect to adhere closer to the standard and to make more sense (Oracle has been around for a long time and has a lot of old and non-standard SQL built in). Overall things are simpler yet everything runs as fast or faster than it did on Oracle. Better price, better performance, better documentation, better SQL, better install process... what's not to like?

kuschku 9y ago
> yet everything runs as fast or faster than it did on Oracle. Be careful with that statement, Oracle’s license disallows users of the database from making benchmarks or any kind of performance comparisons (another reason to move to PGSQL) EDIT: Source that refers to the ToS: https://stackoverflow.com/a/12116865 https://stackoverflow.com/a/12116865
- SomeHacker44 9y ago
  Sure sounds like they're an ex-user of Oracle and not a user. :)
- vkjv 9y ago
  If they are no longer using it, would the license still apply?
  - 7265626F6F74 9y ago
    Even if they are an ex-user of Oracle products, they would have had to benchmark the software at a time the were using it or have someone who is using it benchmark it. Either way a benchmark would be made at some point while an Oracle product user, which taking kuschku's word for it, is against the license agreement.
    - mjw1007 9y ago
      Looking at the license agreement, it doesn't prohibit running benchmarks and recording their results, so if you ask me they wouldn't be breaking the agreement at the time they were bound by it. (Of course nobody in danger of getting involved in a court case with Oracle is going to be asking me.)

mohaine 9y ago

The warts from a dev perspective: 1) Oracle is really lacking in modern features/usability. Features where frozen in roughly 1999 and they are pretty still the same (mostly). (You are STILL limited to 30 chars for a table name FFS). They do add new stuff from time to time but anything existing isn't modified. Works but not fun to work with. 2) MSSQL needs NOLOCK everywhere (I've seen codebases with this on EVERY query). The default locking really sucks. I'm sure a DBA can make the locking sane system wide but I've never seen this on any of the DBs I've worked with. Also, SQL Manager is a PITA IMHO. Toad it is not. Almost all DB interactions via a 1G windows only install is a "bad idea" 3) MySQL is nice but will just silently eat your data from time to time. Auto truncate is evil, as is missing enums. These have both hit me multiple times in production. Note: Not sure if this is still the case since I avoid it now for this reason. 4) Postgres. Lots of nice features and easy to work with but the optimizer will sometimes do something silly. Sometimes you have to cast your bound variable just use an index. (id=? => id=?::NUMBER just because you do a setObject in jdbc)

gnud 9y ago
For the MSSQL locking, you should probably change the transaction isolation level instead of using NOLOCK everywhere. I think it's a horrible wart that you have to do that for every session, though. The default can't be changed.
adzm 9y ago
Change the mssql translation to run in read committed snapshot to get similar behavior to Oracle. NOLOCK is usually a bad idea.
skissane 9y ago
> (You are STILL limited to 30 chars for a table name FFS). In the latest release, 12.2, the limit has been increased to 128. https://docs.oracle.com/database/122/NEWFT/new-features.htm#GUID-64283AD6-0939-47B0-856E-5E9255D7246B https://docs.oracle.com/database/122/NEWFT/new-features.htm#...
- mohaine 9y ago

wenc 9y ago

I cannot comment on every single aspect of Postgres vs MSSQL, but there are a few things I like in MSSQL that I don't believe exist in Postgres: 1) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) - the default GUI is a decent free front-end that integrates well and lets you do advanced stuff like graphically live-profile queries (live execution plans), easily setup security, build indices, setup various things like linked servers, compression, etc. Although I'm a text-editor sort of person, I don't have SQL syntax memorized for infrequent tasks like creating indices so a GUI (or an IDE) can really help productivity in these instances. Postgres's default GUI, pgAdmin is comparatively weak, and the good ones are third-party payware. 2) Columnar indices - MSSQL has a fairly good implementation called columnstore indices, which creates a derived column-oriented data structure which speeds up analytic queries quite a bit. 3) Speed - SQL Server is very performant and optimized, and doesn't choke on very large datasets. Postgres is decent, but on my datasets it doesn't seem to be very performant. Also, MSSQL locking is a boon and a bane. It's not the best for environments with high contention, but it is ok for most analytic database use cases. On the other hand, Postgres' MVCC (and oh the vacuuming) can be annoying.

starik36 9y ago
What are the good third-party payware GUIs for Postgres? I've looked and never seen any that came anywhere close to SSMS, much less SSMS + SQL Prompt combo.
- mappu 9y ago
  I use HeidiSQL for MySQL, it seems to support Postgres.
- wenc 9y ago
  There's Navicat. Datagrip is on its way to becoming really good, though it still has some issues. There's a whole list here: https://postgresapp.com/documentation/gui-tools.html https://postgresapp.com/documentation/gui-tools.html (I use the free Apex Refactor with SSMS and it makes editing SQL a pleasure)
  - 9y ago

ianamartin 9y ago

I cut my teeth on Oracle when I was first getting started in technology. All I did was write ad hoc queries all day long. My next DB heavy job was using SQL Server, where I built an analytics engine to do bootstrapping for sparse datasets. After that I used it to run the back-end data layer for a credit card processing company. I used MySQL at a different finance company that was doing similar things but at a smaller scale. Ever since then, I’ve been using Postgres. Based on that experience, I’d rank them in this order: 1. Postgres 2. SQL Server 3. Oracle 99. MySQL Postgres often lags behind the others in features, but the dev team chooses their battles wisely and ends up with better implementations. Postgres is a real beacon of light in the open source world. Solid community. Many projects claim the benefits of open source, but they are never fully realized. Also, because Postgres is not operated by a freemium model, you always have access to the latest and greatest features. The extensibility is fantastic and well-leveraged by the community. I’ve never experienced a case where Postgres tried to figure out what I was doing and decided to do the wrong thing. Postgres fails early and loudly when there’s a problem with what I’m asking it to do, which is exactly what I want it to do. I don’t ever want to have to second guess the integrity of my data. I haven’t run explicit benchmarks between any of these databases. But when I do similar things across two different systems, I feel like they are generally on par. But like I said, I can’t prove that with any numbers. There are probably specific work profiles that people can come up with that would show better performance for one platform over the other. But I don’t think there’s a realistic difference in performance in general. Not one that’s big enough to push your decision. The real moment of revelation though, is when you find out that you can run your preferred programming language inside of Postgres. When you actually get to the point that transformations are outside of what you want to do in SQL, and you can just write a Python function and have it execute inside your database instead of having to do I/O, process the data, and then push it back . . . it is life-changing. The only reason SQL Server isn’t tied for first place is because of the lack of extensibility and because it’s expensive to use in production. But it is rock solid, and has some nice things that Postgres doesn’t have, like hinting queries. Again, the Postgres community has discussed this, and it may never actually happen, but there are reasonable points as to why not. But it is really handy in SQL Server to be able to guide the query planner on the fly like that. SQL Server has also had solid pub-sub for a long time, though we’re getting that now with this version of Postgres. I’m not a huge fan of Microsoft in general, but you absolutely have to give them props for their tooling. There is nothing even close to SSMS for any other database system. It is by far the gold standard for a visual interface to you data. Obviously, if you’re throwing down money, you’re also getting a certain level of support for the product. I’m not convinced this should be a deciding factor between Postgresand SQL Server because, again, the Postgres community is amazing. I should also point out that there’s a free version of SQL Server that will suffice for the needs of a great many people. It’s features are limited (no pub/sub, and there’s a size limit on your total dataset), but it’s totally functional for a lot of use cases. Even though I use Postgres for everything in production, I will always keep a PC around to run SQL Server for one off things that are just easier to do there. Oracle is mostly fine. I was so new to everything when I was using it that I probably can’t speak that well to its strengths and weaknesses. Other people who have used it more recently can probably do it better than me. I just can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would pay their prices when SQL Server and Postgres exist, unless it’s for the support contract. And where I’m kind of meh about Microsoft, I’m actively against Oracle and Sun Microsystems. I’m pretty sure that Larry Ellison’s personal model is, “Just go ahead and be evil.” But that’s kind of a tangent and not really all that relevant. MySQL is a different animal. It has a different design philosophy than the others. It’s more like MongoDB in principle than the others are. It’s main goal is to be friendly to the developer. And to entice you into upgrading to the paid tier. Which is all fine. But one consequence of that is that it tries really hard to succeed under any circumstance, even if “success” means corrupting or losing your data. So it fails rarely, late, and quietly under certain conditions. For that reason, I don’t think of it as even being in the same category as the other three. As in, it would never be an option for me, similar to MongoDB. I want my dev tools and programming languages to be focused on the developer. And I want my data store to be focused on my data. I think that this is a fundamental and deadly flaw with MySQL. Different use cases have different requirement though, so your mileage will vary. I’m an incredible pedant about data integrity because the work I do requires it. There are legitimate cases where it just doesn’t matter all that much. But in terms of feature parity and performance, they are all pretty close in general terms. Each will have specific cases that they really excel at and have been optimized for.