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"More recently, my own conversations with EnterpriseDB sales executives indicate an acceleration of commercial interest in Postgres, including from MySQL custom

• lkrubner 16y ago
  It is a little sad to rewind the tape and go back to 1999, when both MySql and PostGres were talked about as being roughly equal. MySql had not yet taken over open source databases yet. MySql was greatly helped by the rise of PHP - I think those 2 technologies grew up together, and leaned on each other. But I also recall, when I was learning PHP in 1999, most PHP books devoted some time to Postgres. And PHP supported Postgres from the beginning. It wasn't till a few years later that I started to see book titles like "PHP/MySql development for beginners" as if those 2 technologies just naturally belonged together. I recall when Tim Perdue published this article in 2000, and the strong impression it made on me that PostGres was the much better database: http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/tim20000705.php3 http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/tim20000705.php3 Tim found that PostGres could scale: "The most interesting thing about my test results was to see how much of a load Postgres could withstand before giving any errors. In fact, Postgres seemed to scale 3 times higher than MySQL before giving any errors at all. MySQL begins collapsing at about 40-50 concurrent connections, whereas Postgres handily scaled to 120 before balking. My guess is, that Postgres could have gone far past 120 connections with enough memory and CPU." At that time, circa 2000, developers often claimed that they could live without ACID reliability, in exchange for speed. Thus, there preference was for MySql. There is something to that argument of course. In recent years, the NoSql movement has gone much further, throwing out integrity as a concern, in exchange for massive scaling and fast speed. Somehow, lost in the shuffle was the fact Postgres is, in most ways, technologically superior to MySql. It may not be as fast as MySql, in some situations, but for a wide range of purposes, it should be really be preferred to MySql. And I think, somehow, developers have often forgotten that, for a wide range of purposes, the best choice would be Postgres.
  • gaius 16y ago
    MySQL already had the mindshare back then, Slashdot hyped it to the heavens. It was considered "sexy" to sacrifice safety for speed...
    • chipsy 16y ago
      At that time it was also considerably more expensive to get servers, so hardware scaling of any kind was less desirable. The cheap virtualization we enjoy now only came in around mid-decade.
  • seldo 16y ago
    Back in 1997, my decision between postgres and MySQL was made for me by the fact that Postgres was pretty much impossible to install on my Windows box, while MySQL had a sexy InstallShield. When you are trying to make your technology attractive to a broad base, it's important to remember that newbie developers will always take the simplest path, and that 95% of all computers are Windows boxes. If your software is not very, very Windows-friendly, you will lose first-timers to technologies that are. This was also one of the big, big factors in PHP's success. Obviously, running a website or a database on Windows is a bad idea, but you need to learn how to code before you need to learn that fact.
    • teilo 16y ago
      Respectfully, I really don't think the Windows factor had much to do with it. It came down to one thing: the perception that MySQL was fast and Postgres was slow. Further, MySQL was easier to setup due to its simplistic security model, and thus there was less to learn.
      • davidw 16y ago
        > It came down to one thing: the perception that MySQL was fast and Postgres was slow. I've always said that Mysql (with MyISAM rather than InnoDB, to be fair) was like a bicycle without brakes. Yes, it's faster going down hills, however...