5 ms·

My first job in IT, I was 18, it was the early 2000s. I was a nerd but in professional IT I was essentially a blank slate. I lucked up and ended up with a real

My first job in IT, I was 18, it was the early 2000s. I was a nerd but in professional IT I was essentially a blank slate. I lucked up and ended up with a real hacker for a boss. As early as 2001-2002 he had saved entire businesses by migrating them from mysql to postgres. He was a BSD guy and a postgres guy. He made me into a fanboy of both those technologies. So out of sheer luck I've preferred Postgres for over 15 years, and it has never disappointed me. Unlike BSD, which often disappointed me once I learned how much easier and mature Linux was to use.

laumars 7y ago
> Unlike BSD, which often disappointed me once I learned how much easier and mature Linux was to use. I was with you right until that last sentence. I'm not going to offer a counterargument because your statement is extremely genralised and ripe for flamewars but I will say it's not as clear cut as you stated.
krainboltgreene 7y ago
> As early as 2001-2002 he had saved entire businesses by migrating them from mysql to postgres. I'm extremely curious how this worked out.
- INTPenis 7y ago
  Well I was 18-19 so to me these were myths I heard re-told. But all I know is that they had been throwing hardware on a MySQL install to make it work better. He migrated them to postgres and they got much better performance and could get away with less hardware than they had with mysql. That was as much detail that I remember. Keep in mind I said by sheer luck I became a fanboy. Not by experience and competence. That came later.
  - mm89 7y ago
    Interesting username, that's for sure!
  - patrec 7y ago
    This isn't hard to believe. MySQL basically started out as a key-value store pretending to be a relational database. If you wanted to do KV stuff and didn't care too much about data corruption (or knew the five zillion magic incantations to mostly avoid them) it was fast. But If you wanted joins or expected the query optimizer to do anything for you, you were SOL.
    - ncmncm 7y ago
      The dirty secret of database engine development is that all the things that are hardest to do in the database proper are super-easy to do in the application, given a few judicious architectural choices; but despite that, nobody can count on app writers to do them right. So, DB engine developers have to bust their humps to cover for users' incompetence. A database for competent users can be amazingly simple and fast. But the Market Has Spoken, loud and clear: databases must absorb an indefinitely large amount of complexity to make the job of app writers a tiny bit easier.
      - patrec 7y ago
        I'd be curious to see some examples of what you mean! I think there are definitely cases where DB needs to compensate for bad architecture, but then even competent developers can profit from the flexibility of being able to ad new features ad hoc to an existing db schema/architecture and the DB just magically bailing them out.
jonnypotty 7y ago
In my experience when people are able to "fix" performance issues by moving from sql database a to sql database b it's because they understand database b and how to optimise for it. Not because the database is better or worse. My company was "saved" moving from postgress to mysql. The difference was the guy and his specific knowledge, not the database technology.
- INTPenis 7y ago
  Yeah I agree. In practice now that I've accumulated my own experience I feel that Galera clustering is much better than anything I used in Postgres. So far I've only setup one master/slave cluster with pgpool-II in postgres and it's definitely an OK setup. But I much prefer the usability and stability of Galera/MariaDB for clustering.
- tpetry 7y ago
  And you now know better on how to structure your data because you have done plenty of migrations and changes but couldnt change everything you wanted to because the whole data access logic would need to be rewritten.
- mamcx 7y ago
  > As early as 2001-2002... from mysql to postgres. MySql was pretty bad in the first versions. I'm in the enterprise/erp development world, and when I look at mysql when it start to show in the radar, I can't believe the joke. MySql get good around 5? Now I can say all major DBs are good enough not matter what you chosee, (still think PG is the best around) but MySql was always the more risky proposition, the PHP of the db engines...
xiljin 7y ago
I discovered PostgreSQL in a similar happenstance sort of way - working at a large telecom directly out of college in the late 90s, tasked with setting up a MySQL backed webapp to manage some internal processes. Fortunately, I was unable to compile MySQL on our HPUX workstations (issue with threads IIRC), PostgreSQL to the rescue. Been using it ever since.
hylaride 7y ago
> Unlike BSD, which often disappointed me once I learned how much easier and mature Linux was to use. With the exception of package management (at least with debian) I've found the opposite to be true. It's configuration has always been a bit of a mess, especially with regards to networking. Lately systemd has made things only more confusing. And that's before dealing with the myriad of ways different distributions do things (which thankfully now is really only 2 different bases, debian or red hat). While linux "won" in the end and I use it professionally now, I'm glad I rarely have to interact with it directly anymore thanks to ansible or other orchestration tools.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

laumars 7y ago

> Unlike BSD, which often disappointed me once I learned how much easier and mature Linux was to use. I was with you right until that last sentence. I'm not going to offer a counterargument because your statement is extremely genralised and ripe for flamewars but I will say it's not as clear cut as you stated.

krainboltgreene 7y ago

> As early as 2001-2002 he had saved entire businesses by migrating them from mysql to postgres. I'm extremely curious how this worked out.

INTPenis 7y ago
Well I was 18-19 so to me these were myths I heard re-told. But all I know is that they had been throwing hardware on a MySQL install to make it work better. He migrated them to postgres and they got much better performance and could get away with less hardware than they had with mysql. That was as much detail that I remember. Keep in mind I said by sheer luck I became a fanboy. Not by experience and competence. That came later.
- mm89 7y ago
  Interesting username, that's for sure!
- patrec 7y ago
  This isn't hard to believe. MySQL basically started out as a key-value store pretending to be a relational database. If you wanted to do KV stuff and didn't care too much about data corruption (or knew the five zillion magic incantations to mostly avoid them) it was fast. But If you wanted joins or expected the query optimizer to do anything for you, you were SOL.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    The dirty secret of database engine development is that all the things that are hardest to do in the database proper are super-easy to do in the application, given a few judicious architectural choices; but despite that, nobody can count on app writers to do them right. So, DB engine developers have to bust their humps to cover for users' incompetence. A database for competent users can be amazingly simple and fast. But the Market Has Spoken, loud and clear: databases must absorb an indefinitely large amount of complexity to make the job of app writers a tiny bit easier.
    - patrec 7y ago
      I'd be curious to see some examples of what you mean! I think there are definitely cases where DB needs to compensate for bad architecture, but then even competent developers can profit from the flexibility of being able to ad new features ad hoc to an existing db schema/architecture and the DB just magically bailing them out.

jonnypotty 7y ago

In my experience when people are able to "fix" performance issues by moving from sql database a to sql database b it's because they understand database b and how to optimise for it. Not because the database is better or worse. My company was "saved" moving from postgress to mysql. The difference was the guy and his specific knowledge, not the database technology.

INTPenis 7y ago
Yeah I agree. In practice now that I've accumulated my own experience I feel that Galera clustering is much better than anything I used in Postgres. So far I've only setup one master/slave cluster with pgpool-II in postgres and it's definitely an OK setup. But I much prefer the usability and stability of Galera/MariaDB for clustering.
tpetry 7y ago
And you now know better on how to structure your data because you have done plenty of migrations and changes but couldnt change everything you wanted to because the whole data access logic would need to be rewritten.
mamcx 7y ago
> As early as 2001-2002... from mysql to postgres. MySql was pretty bad in the first versions. I'm in the enterprise/erp development world, and when I look at mysql when it start to show in the radar, I can't believe the joke. MySql get good around 5? Now I can say all major DBs are good enough not matter what you chosee, (still think PG is the best around) but MySql was always the more risky proposition, the PHP of the db engines...

xiljin 7y ago

I discovered PostgreSQL in a similar happenstance sort of way - working at a large telecom directly out of college in the late 90s, tasked with setting up a MySQL backed webapp to manage some internal processes. Fortunately, I was unable to compile MySQL on our HPUX workstations (issue with threads IIRC), PostgreSQL to the rescue. Been using it ever since.

hylaride 7y ago

> Unlike BSD, which often disappointed me once I learned how much easier and mature Linux was to use. With the exception of package management (at least with debian) I've found the opposite to be true. It's configuration has always been a bit of a mess, especially with regards to networking. Lately systemd has made things only more confusing. And that's before dealing with the myriad of ways different distributions do things (which thankfully now is really only 2 different bases, debian or red hat). While linux "won" in the end and I use it professionally now, I'm glad I rarely have to interact with it directly anymore thanks to ansible or other orchestration tools.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]