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Full quote. > MySQL is very popular. According to db-engines.com, it’s the second most popular SQL database overall. More importantly: it is, by a huge margin,

Full quote. > MySQL is very popular. According to db-engines.com, it’s the second most popular SQL database overall. More importantly: it is, by a huge margin, the most popular free SQL database. The second sentence is linked: https://db-engines.com/en/ranking https://db-engines.com/en/ranking The third sentence refers to the same source.

Digital-Citizen 8y ago
Thanks for the link, but I find this highly unlikely to be what the article or db-engines.com claims. The data comes from vague sources that don't jibe with number of installations. The word "popular" is used in such a perverse way it renders the db-engines.com ranking and that claim in the article impossible to believe. That ranking site claims "The DB-Engines Ranking ranks database management systems according to their popularity." but then includes concepts such as "Number of mentions of the system on websites", "General interest in the system", and "Relevance in social networks" as part of the ranking (see https://db-engines.com/en/ranking_definition https://db-engines.com/en/ranking_definition for details). In fact, the one thing one would typically consider to be "popularity" -- installed base size -- is not considered at all ("The DB-Engines Ranking does not measure the number of installations of the systems, or their use within IT systems."). In fact the paragraph from which I drew that quote highlights how ridiculous this site is: to understand that paragraph's use of the word "popular" you have to use the common definition, the definition they won't use in computing their so-called "popularity" ranking. This tells me that db-engine.com's ranking is not to be taken seriously. As SQLite's page I pointed to claims, virtually every modern operating system and many popular programs come with at least one copy of SQLite. But then again, understanding the previous sentence requires using the word "popular" in a way that most people use that word most of the time, not the perverse way db-engines.com used the word. Put differently, Oracle, db-engines.com #1 pick, doesn't run on iOS, MacOS, GNU/Linux, and some variants of Windows. That means there are a considerable number of systems that host at least one copy of SQLite and will never host Oracle. I find it very difficult to believe that there are more running or installed instances of Oracle on the world's computers than there are SQLite. The original article is plainly wrong. MySQL is nowhere nearly as "popular" as is claimed and the backing to believe otherwise hinges on a highly dubious source.

Digital-Citizen 8y ago

Thanks for the link, but I find this highly unlikely to be what the article or db-engines.com claims. The data comes from vague sources that don't jibe with number of installations. The word "popular" is used in such a perverse way it renders the db-engines.com ranking and that claim in the article impossible to believe. That ranking site claims "The DB-Engines Ranking ranks database management systems according to their popularity." but then includes concepts such as "Number of mentions of the system on websites", "General interest in the system", and "Relevance in social networks" as part of the ranking (see https://db-engines.com/en/ranking_definition https://db-engines.com/en/ranking_definition for details). In fact, the one thing one would typically consider to be "popularity" -- installed base size -- is not considered at all ("The DB-Engines Ranking does not measure the number of installations of the systems, or their use within IT systems."). In fact the paragraph from which I drew that quote highlights how ridiculous this site is: to understand that paragraph's use of the word "popular" you have to use the common definition, the definition they won't use in computing their so-called "popularity" ranking. This tells me that db-engine.com's ranking is not to be taken seriously. As SQLite's page I pointed to claims, virtually every modern operating system and many popular programs come with at least one copy of SQLite. But then again, understanding the previous sentence requires using the word "popular" in a way that most people use that word most of the time, not the perverse way db-engines.com used the word. Put differently, Oracle, db-engines.com #1 pick, doesn't run on iOS, MacOS, GNU/Linux, and some variants of Windows. That means there are a considerable number of systems that host at least one copy of SQLite and will never host Oracle. I find it very difficult to believe that there are more running or installed instances of Oracle on the world's computers than there are SQLite. The original article is plainly wrong. MySQL is nowhere nearly as "popular" as is claimed and the backing to believe otherwise hinges on a highly dubious source.