9 ms·

For me, this project is the biggest FLOSS success story after Linux, xBSD and the GNU stuff. Great quality, amazing team. The best RDBMS that exists today and t

by kriro 6y ago

For me, this project is the biggest FLOSS success story after Linux, xBSD and the GNU stuff. Great quality, amazing team. The best RDBMS that exists today and that includes commercial ones (imo). Thank you.

VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
I think MySQL is still significantly more widely deployed. And Postresql wouldn't be ahead of things like Firefox, apache, etc in terms of successful FLOSS. The world wouldn't really be that much different if postgres didn't exist. But it would be significantly worse if Firefox or apache never existed
- spacemanmatt 6y ago
  I think that is a rather naive take on the scope of PostgreSQL in "invisible" services you depend on regularly
  - VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
    can be swapped out for another floss database pretty easy without any real impact. internet in general would be significantly worse right now if FF or apache never took off
    - jimktrains2 6y ago
      Spoken by someone who has never used any db specific functionality to facilitate simplifying logic and constraints.
    - pronik 6y ago
      I wish you the best of luck replacing PostGIS with just about anything else.
    - spacemanmatt 6y ago
      [laugh react]
- sosodev 6y ago
  Measuring the importance of Postgres is tricky. I’ve noticed that a lot of new DB services use Postgres tech at some level. Cockroach DB is a good example and arguably a pretty important project.
  - manigandham 6y ago
    What do you mean? CockroachDB doesn't use any Postgres tech other than reusing the same wire protocol.
    - sosodev 6y ago
      But that is Postgres tech and it gave CockroachDB the ability to reuse existing client code for Postgres. https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/why-postgres/ https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/why-postgres/
- developer2 6y ago
  I don't know why this comment is downvoted so much. Every company I've worked for uses MySQL (or a MySQL fork, eg. MariaDB or Percona). I've never seen an installation of Postgres used in production at any company I've worked for. I've been waiting for a decade to start using it, but there have always been three issues that made Postgres an unacceptable choice for my coworkers and me, at every single company I've worked for: 1. The lack of built-in replication, requiring third-party plugins based on slow triggers, etc. Postgres finally added, after many years, off-the-shelf replication, resolving this concern. 2. No equivalent to MySQL's "utf8mb4_unicode_ci" or "utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci". Postgres finally added, after many years, the "und-x-icu" collation, resolving this concern. 3. Lack of a multi-threaded model, meaning every new client connection forks a new child process, utterly decimating performance and scaling. Expecting users to throw a connection pool/proxy server in front of every Postgres installation to work around that bottleneck is unacceptable; a proper multi-threaded model needs to be provided off-the-shelf. The developers continue to fight back on this issue, and the fact is they are wrong. If and when that final point is resolved, I might finally be able to put together a proposal showing all of the benefits and features present in Postgres compared to MySQL; and with those above three points all resolved, I might actually be able to gain traction and support with the other senior developers, and win a plea to management.
  - zeroimpl 6y ago
    Don’t your clients need their own connection pools anyways? Eg if the webserver isn’t pooling connections itself, that’s a problem regardless.
    - spacemanmatt 6y ago
      Pooler-proxies exist because some applications do not or cannot pool connections. Sometimes these are applications we just don't have the code to.
  - johnthescott 6y ago
    > I've never seen an installation of Postgres used in production at any company I've worked for. many well known companies use postgresql in forward facing and internal systems. my company during 911 led the deployment of critical paging infrastructure run on postgresql. https://postgresql.us/events/pgopen2015/schedule/speaker/74-john-mason-scott/ https://postgresql.us/events/pgopen2015/schedule/speaker/74-...
ruairispain 6y ago
Personally, I think MySQL died when Oracle got involved with it. The momentum was sucked right out of the project. The great think about Postgres is it has huge momentum and the team are delivering new features. Maybe Apache has less momentum because it's matured and doesn't need much momentum. From a momentum point of view I see Postgres as the biggest FLOSS project. I see no point in choosing another RDBMS right now. Time to short ORA stock
- jpitz 6y ago
  As much as I vastly prefer PostgreSQL, I will tell you that MySQL is much more preferred in enterprise settings, probably 8 to 1 in the environments I've seen.
  - dpcx 6y ago
    I've experienced this as well, and it's almost always because the tooling for MySQL is "better." I don't necessarily agree, but Sequel Ace (formerly Sequel Pro) is hard to beat.
    - Izkata 6y ago
      > "better." Inertia is what I've noticed as well. The few people I've convinced to actually try out postgres have ended up liking it more than mysql.
    - apazzolini 6y ago
      Oh how I wish Sequel Pro/Ace worked on Postgres.
      - mustardo 6y ago
        The DB support in Jetbrains IDEA is awesome, they also have it as a stand alone IDE called Data Grip, could be woth a shot? https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/ https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/
    - rguldener 6y ago
kumarvvr 6y ago
Absolutely. I wish there are case studies about how Pgsql managed to be on the top and innovate so effectively for so long. I love this db. Its the database for the rest of us and the database for everyone else.
- diggan 6y ago
  > and the database for everyone else I also love postgresql but lets not get ahead of ourselves! It's great for SQL and as a traditional relational database, but there are plenty of use cases that are better served using other models (especially if you care about _time_ as a concept, then Datomic or crux is probably better suited) [although there are attempts on making bitemporality accessible in postgresql too, like https://github.com/scalegenius/pg_bitemporal https://github.com/scalegenius/pg_bitemporal]
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 6y ago
    There is a professionally developed time series extension for Postgres. I haven’t tried it personally but it might be “good enough” for quite a few use cases just like Postgres’ full text search can be “good enough” without having to bring in the machine gun that is ElasticSearch/Solr.
    - diggan 6y ago
      Right, and it's probably "good enough" for most use cases. But, as always, it can't cover _everything_. I'm just making an argument against the sweeping argument that "postgresql is for everyone and everything"
    - jjjensen90 6y ago
      I brought timescale (a postgres extension that brings time series to postgres) to my current IoT job, and it has been the biggest engineering win of my career. The tooling, community, extensions, and quality of postgres + very high performance inserts + reads has reduced costs for the business dramatically versus the previous cassandra + sql server setup. We have tens of billions of events in multiple timescale hypertables, with many thousands of inserts per second running on r5.xl nodes in k8s (4 vcpu, 30gb ram) and they don't break a sweat. So yeah, it's "good enough".
joseluisq 6y ago
PostgreSQL team and community disserve a big thanks for the huge effort during the years. One of the most amazing FLOSS databases with nothing to envy to others RDBMSs.
- please-reread 6y ago
  The typo does a bit of disservice to a well-meant comment.
  - joseluisq 6y ago
    Sorry for the typo. I was just reading the thread on my mobile while walking, my clear mistake. However it's obvious the well-meant on the thread above.
mariushn 6y ago
Anyone can share what makes PostgreSQL so successful? Maybe other projects can learn adopt a few of these good practices. How are the team members funded? I was surprised to write a suggestion a few months ago and got replies from Tom Lane & Bruce Momjian themselves.
- luhn 6y ago
  Most of the core team is employed by enterprise Postgres companies (EnterpriseDB, Crunchy Data, 2nd Quadrant, Citus Data). I think they're allowed to put a portion of their workweek towards Postgres.
- cookiecaper 6y ago
  > Anyone can share what makes PostgreSQL so successful? Maybe other projects can learn adopt a few of these good practices. Since honesty is a theme of this thread, let's be real here. PgSQL is popular now only because Oracle killed MySQL. This is not to denigrate the work of the Postgres team -- it's easily one of the best-managed open-source projects and my admiration for them is immense -- but ~95% of the time, the tech stack is chosen as a fashion statement. MySQL was fashionable until Oracle showed up. Postgres has been trucking along for decades and has essentially won by default. I don't know if there are many great marketing insights to take away, other than "stay out of the way of the $50B gorilla".
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    I agreed with you until the "fashion" thing. Yes, Postgres adoption and development really picked up steam once Oracle acquired MySQL and quickly confirmed everybody's fears: they bought it primarily to ensure that MySQL stayed something of a "toy" database. But the "fashion" thing is needless, insulting, and not even correct in my opinion. As far as mindless fashion trends in the industry go, traditional RDBMS's like Postgres are almost the antithesis of fashion.
    - cookiecaper 6y ago
      I should clarify. I'm not saying that Postgres is unworthy or that its adoption is fashion-driven -- it's part of the 5-10% that is driven by practicality. That is only the case now because, as you said, there is no fashionable conventional RDBMS anymore. It's all about transferring as much money as humanly possible to Jeff Bezos now. :) The grandparent was asking what we can learn from Postgres in terms of driving adoption, as I understood it. And the reality is that most of Postgres's recent adoption uptick is because there really aren't many other options. It's not a good example of driving adoption in a crowded market, etc. My apologies for being unclear before, and thanks for pointing it out so I can try to clarify.
knocte 6y ago
> after Linux, xBSD and the GNU stuff Just after Linux IMO.

by kriro 6y ago

VWWHFSfQ 6y ago

I think MySQL is still significantly more widely deployed. And Postresql wouldn't be ahead of things like Firefox, apache, etc in terms of successful FLOSS. The world wouldn't really be that much different if postgres didn't exist. But it would be significantly worse if Firefox or apache never existed

spacemanmatt 6y ago
I think that is a rather naive take on the scope of PostgreSQL in "invisible" services you depend on regularly
- VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
  can be swapped out for another floss database pretty easy without any real impact. internet in general would be significantly worse right now if FF or apache never took off
  - jimktrains2 6y ago
    Spoken by someone who has never used any db specific functionality to facilitate simplifying logic and constraints.
  - pronik 6y ago
    I wish you the best of luck replacing PostGIS with just about anything else.
  - spacemanmatt 6y ago
    [laugh react]
sosodev 6y ago
Measuring the importance of Postgres is tricky. I’ve noticed that a lot of new DB services use Postgres tech at some level. Cockroach DB is a good example and arguably a pretty important project.
- manigandham 6y ago
  What do you mean? CockroachDB doesn't use any Postgres tech other than reusing the same wire protocol.
  - sosodev 6y ago
    But that is Postgres tech and it gave CockroachDB the ability to reuse existing client code for Postgres. https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/why-postgres/ https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/why-postgres/
developer2 6y ago
I don't know why this comment is downvoted so much. Every company I've worked for uses MySQL (or a MySQL fork, eg. MariaDB or Percona). I've never seen an installation of Postgres used in production at any company I've worked for. I've been waiting for a decade to start using it, but there have always been three issues that made Postgres an unacceptable choice for my coworkers and me, at every single company I've worked for: 1. The lack of built-in replication, requiring third-party plugins based on slow triggers, etc. Postgres finally added, after many years, off-the-shelf replication, resolving this concern. 2. No equivalent to MySQL's "utf8mb4_unicode_ci" or "utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci". Postgres finally added, after many years, the "und-x-icu" collation, resolving this concern. 3. Lack of a multi-threaded model, meaning every new client connection forks a new child process, utterly decimating performance and scaling. Expecting users to throw a connection pool/proxy server in front of every Postgres installation to work around that bottleneck is unacceptable; a proper multi-threaded model needs to be provided off-the-shelf. The developers continue to fight back on this issue, and the fact is they are wrong. If and when that final point is resolved, I might finally be able to put together a proposal showing all of the benefits and features present in Postgres compared to MySQL; and with those above three points all resolved, I might actually be able to gain traction and support with the other senior developers, and win a plea to management.
- zeroimpl 6y ago
  Don’t your clients need their own connection pools anyways? Eg if the webserver isn’t pooling connections itself, that’s a problem regardless.
  - spacemanmatt 6y ago
    Pooler-proxies exist because some applications do not or cannot pool connections. Sometimes these are applications we just don't have the code to.
- johnthescott 6y ago
  > I've never seen an installation of Postgres used in production at any company I've worked for. many well known companies use postgresql in forward facing and internal systems. my company during 911 led the deployment of critical paging infrastructure run on postgresql. https://postgresql.us/events/pgopen2015/schedule/speaker/74-john-mason-scott/ https://postgresql.us/events/pgopen2015/schedule/speaker/74-...

ruairispain 6y ago

Personally, I think MySQL died when Oracle got involved with it. The momentum was sucked right out of the project. The great think about Postgres is it has huge momentum and the team are delivering new features. Maybe Apache has less momentum because it's matured and doesn't need much momentum. From a momentum point of view I see Postgres as the biggest FLOSS project. I see no point in choosing another RDBMS right now. Time to short ORA stock

jpitz 6y ago
As much as I vastly prefer PostgreSQL, I will tell you that MySQL is much more preferred in enterprise settings, probably 8 to 1 in the environments I've seen.
- dpcx 6y ago
  I've experienced this as well, and it's almost always because the tooling for MySQL is "better." I don't necessarily agree, but Sequel Ace (formerly Sequel Pro) is hard to beat.
  - Izkata 6y ago
    > "better." Inertia is what I've noticed as well. The few people I've convinced to actually try out postgres have ended up liking it more than mysql.
  - apazzolini 6y ago
    Oh how I wish Sequel Pro/Ace worked on Postgres.
    - mustardo 6y ago
      The DB support in Jetbrains IDEA is awesome, they also have it as a stand alone IDE called Data Grip, could be woth a shot? https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/ https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/
  - rguldener 6y ago

kumarvvr 6y ago

Absolutely. I wish there are case studies about how Pgsql managed to be on the top and innovate so effectively for so long. I love this db. Its the database for the rest of us and the database for everyone else.

diggan 6y ago
> and the database for everyone else I also love postgresql but lets not get ahead of ourselves! It's great for SQL and as a traditional relational database, but there are plenty of use cases that are better served using other models (especially if you care about _time_ as a concept, then Datomic or crux is probably better suited) [although there are attempts on making bitemporality accessible in postgresql too, like https://github.com/scalegenius/pg_bitemporal https://github.com/scalegenius/pg_bitemporal]
- SOLAR_FIELDS 6y ago
  There is a professionally developed time series extension for Postgres. I haven’t tried it personally but it might be “good enough” for quite a few use cases just like Postgres’ full text search can be “good enough” without having to bring in the machine gun that is ElasticSearch/Solr.
  - diggan 6y ago
    Right, and it's probably "good enough" for most use cases. But, as always, it can't cover _everything_. I'm just making an argument against the sweeping argument that "postgresql is for everyone and everything"
  - jjjensen90 6y ago
    I brought timescale (a postgres extension that brings time series to postgres) to my current IoT job, and it has been the biggest engineering win of my career. The tooling, community, extensions, and quality of postgres + very high performance inserts + reads has reduced costs for the business dramatically versus the previous cassandra + sql server setup. We have tens of billions of events in multiple timescale hypertables, with many thousands of inserts per second running on r5.xl nodes in k8s (4 vcpu, 30gb ram) and they don't break a sweat. So yeah, it's "good enough".

joseluisq 6y ago

PostgreSQL team and community disserve a big thanks for the huge effort during the years. One of the most amazing FLOSS databases with nothing to envy to others RDBMSs.

please-reread 6y ago
The typo does a bit of disservice to a well-meant comment.
- joseluisq 6y ago
  Sorry for the typo. I was just reading the thread on my mobile while walking, my clear mistake. However it's obvious the well-meant on the thread above.

mariushn 6y ago

Anyone can share what makes PostgreSQL so successful? Maybe other projects can learn adopt a few of these good practices. How are the team members funded? I was surprised to write a suggestion a few months ago and got replies from Tom Lane & Bruce Momjian themselves.

luhn 6y ago
Most of the core team is employed by enterprise Postgres companies (EnterpriseDB, Crunchy Data, 2nd Quadrant, Citus Data). I think they're allowed to put a portion of their workweek towards Postgres.
cookiecaper 6y ago
> Anyone can share what makes PostgreSQL so successful? Maybe other projects can learn adopt a few of these good practices. Since honesty is a theme of this thread, let's be real here. PgSQL is popular now only because Oracle killed MySQL. This is not to denigrate the work of the Postgres team -- it's easily one of the best-managed open-source projects and my admiration for them is immense -- but ~95% of the time, the tech stack is chosen as a fashion statement. MySQL was fashionable until Oracle showed up. Postgres has been trucking along for decades and has essentially won by default. I don't know if there are many great marketing insights to take away, other than "stay out of the way of the $50B gorilla".
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  I agreed with you until the "fashion" thing. Yes, Postgres adoption and development really picked up steam once Oracle acquired MySQL and quickly confirmed everybody's fears: they bought it primarily to ensure that MySQL stayed something of a "toy" database. But the "fashion" thing is needless, insulting, and not even correct in my opinion. As far as mindless fashion trends in the industry go, traditional RDBMS's like Postgres are almost the antithesis of fashion.
  - cookiecaper 6y ago
    I should clarify. I'm not saying that Postgres is unworthy or that its adoption is fashion-driven -- it's part of the 5-10% that is driven by practicality. That is only the case now because, as you said, there is no fashionable conventional RDBMS anymore. It's all about transferring as much money as humanly possible to Jeff Bezos now. :) The grandparent was asking what we can learn from Postgres in terms of driving adoption, as I understood it. And the reality is that most of Postgres's recent adoption uptick is because there really aren't many other options. It's not a good example of driving adoption in a crowded market, etc. My apologies for being unclear before, and thanks for pointing it out so I can try to clarify.

knocte 6y ago

> after Linux, xBSD and the GNU stuff Just after Linux IMO.