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Complete outsider view: > internal company communications tried to spin that Oracle is filled with geniuses and WE ARE WINNING IN THE CLOUD. From wikipedia ab

• redleader55 5y ago
  What the Mysql folks never say is that these companies never run the off-the-shelf version, but instead have built engines, tooling and expertise that allow them to prevent developers from being too close to the real Mysql.
• mdasen 5y ago
  One thing I'd note is that a lot of these companies made the decision years ago. MySQL's replication story has been good for a lot longer. It wasn't until September 2010 when PostgreSQL landed replication (and you probably didn't want to adopt the first version). If you were looking to create a highly available service like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, or YouTube before 2010, you were probably looking at MySQL. All those companies were huge before 2010. That was one of MySQL's killer features. No matter how bad any other part of MySQL might be, it did replication. PostgreSQL had some third-party add-ons to do replication, but it was hard, slow, and reasonably easy to do wrong. Some of them were downright bad ideas where they'd just proxy your request to two independent PostgreSQL instances and hope that nothing went wrong, others used triggers on the tables. Literally, the Postgres core team said this about PostgreSQL: "Users who might consider PostgreSQL are choosing other database systems because our existing replication options are too complex to install and use for simple cases." No, those companies wouldn't have considered PostgreSQL and once you get to a certain size, things tend to stick around. That said, many of these companies aren't using MySQL for a lot of new stuff. YouTube developed Vitess to handle some of their MySQL problems, but from what I've heard they've moved off MySQL since then (correct me if I'm wrong). Twitter has its Manhattan database. Facebook has gone through many databases. MediaWiki is a project that people are meant to be able to run on shared hosts and that means PHP/MySQL. Flickr isn't really a company that has done a lot post-2010. That doesn't mean it's a bad site, but it doesn't seem to be making a lot of new stuff. Decisions have context. Without the context, it's easy to come to the wrong conclusion. I don't hate MySQL and PostgreSQL has its problems. I think MySQL's strengths are generally in its current install base and current compatibility. Lots of things work with MySQL. Vitess isn't perfect, but it is a nice project for scaling a relational database. PostgreSQL doesn't have a Vitess. Likewise, many things already work with MySQL like MediaWiki and many things speak the MySQL protocol. However, that's starting to shift. I think we're seeing more things adopt PostgreSQL compatibility. Google's Spanner now has a PostgreSQL layer. RedShift, CockroachDB, and others are going for PostgreSQL compatibility. The thing is that ecosystems take a long time to shift. If it were 2004-2006 when Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter were created, I'd definitely have grabbed MySQL. You need good replication. PostgreSQL wasn't even talking about bringing replication into core back then, never mind having something available. Times change and software changes.
  • midom 5y ago
    > Facebook has gone through many databases. Main use cases (social graph, messaging, ..) are on MySQL (and never left it). Storage engine is different, replication is improved, etc, but it is still tracking upstream MySQL tree. The thing is - PG still relies on physical replication, and staying with logical one allows to use it for out-of-DBMS change data capture and reuse in other systems. > MediaWiki is ... Funny tidbit - I tried to move over Wikipedia to PG ages ago, and did the initial prototyping and made it work to a certain degree. But also I learned about InnoDB more at the time.
• thinkx 5y ago
  Find out who has invested in EDB, the leading Postgres vendor in the market. Postgres is a foundation, so there is no central entity to invest in.