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MySQL is the visual basic of SQL databases. Anyone can set one up and use it. The problem is that many non-technical people use MySQL and then think they know

by 16s 14y ago

MySQL is the visual basic of SQL databases. Anyone can set one up and use it. The problem is that many non-technical people use MySQL and then think they know all about DBs. Ask them what ACID is, or about foreign key constraints. You'll get blank stares. If you know what those things are and value them, you probably don't use MySQL.

AaronBBrown 14y ago
Can you provide some citations to this claim? I know a lot of people who understand ACID, Foreign Keys, and have experience with other DBs (like PostgreSQL) and still often choose MySQL based on its merits.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  I think he is talking about "people who use mysql only because it was the easiest thing to learn" don't know these things, not "experienced DBAs/devs who happen to be using MySQL".
  - spudlyo 14y ago
    Yeah, he's not talking about DBAs who work at Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube, Wikipedia or Twitter. Just because half the Alexa top 10 uses MySQL in production doesn't mean it's not just used by non-technical noobs who don't know any better.
taligent 14y ago
I really don't know where to begin with such a stupid comment. How about you start with listing which of these companies needs educating: http://www.mysql.com/customers/ http://www.mysql.com/customers/ Facebook ? Twitter ? Amazon ? Flickr ?
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  In some of these cases MySQL is not being used as an RDBMS. And in most of those cases it looks like path dependency rather than a selection based on the merits of this or that database. Either way, this is actually an argument from authority ("So and so use Brand X, therefore Brand X has positive qualities Y"). I've sat in on presentations with DB2 engineers who bragged about the data centre IBM runs for UPS. ~12 billion transactions per day (and that was 5 years ago). Does UPS make DB2 better or worse than MySQL? Answer: it's irrelevant. DB2 and MySQL would need to be picked on their merits, not their users.
  - LaGrange 14y ago
    It does invalidate claims that using product X is going to inevitably cause you huge problems once you "grow enough". I've seen a lot of places grow a lot while using MySQL, and the problems aren't really that different or more serious than in places using Postgres or Oracle. In fact, I know enough places moving from Postgres to MySQL due to growing pains.
    - jacques_chester 14y ago
      Right, but we're not talking here about scale. We're talking about ... trustworthiness, I suppose. Dependability. What this article demonstrated is that MySQL will often give a false sense of security. That's not what you want from a system ostensibly meant to provide a number of important technical guarantees. Multi-master is the one tickbox feature where MySQL is still clearly in front. Once the PostgreSQL team finish going about inbuilt multi-master in their usual meticulous, stepwise fashion (my WAG is that it'll land by 9.6), there really won't be any good technical reasons left to use MySQL.
      - LaGrange 14y ago
        But I didn't mean "grow" in exclusively performance meaning. I meant the whole package (as with growth the requirements for reliability also ultimately show up, at least in some parts of the business). Even my current job that involves a lot of MySQL has important chunks of Must Never Go Away Or Else data, with a lot of complex insert/update action going on them, and somehow it's working fairly well for us.
- justinjlynn 14y ago
  The analogy goes like this: If you're very rich, you can do horrible drugs and pay a veritable army of people to keep you presentable and working. Of course, this until one day it doesn't. Being large and successful doesn't mean that there's nothing festering deep within. Companies and people can become so invested in previous solutions that the perceived benefit versus the cost of switching is almost always too low to gather enough political will to execute. MySQL is a drug, when you start it is cheap and available, but as you grow as you hope you will, you start to need more and more. Of course, this exposes many of the flaws and problems of the drugs you were on and if you're in a bad way, still are. Better to go through a bit of pain now and know what you're in for than to just use MySQL because facebook, twitter, amazon, and flickr can pay a huge team of people or large consulting firms to make their technology decisions actually work. If you really must, use MySQL to spike the product but know the side-effects and know when to get the hell off it.
- twerquie 14y ago
  He's clearly talking about people new to databases who choose MySQL because of its ubiquity, not seasoned engineers and large companies operating legacy applications. > Facebook ? Twitter ? Amazon ? Flickr ? I imagine none of these companies would choose MySQL if starting from scratch today.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
troels 14y ago
I've been using MySql for the most of my career, and I did learn about relational algebra, normal forms and whatnot back in school, thank you. It's my experience that most programmers I have worked with knows about this stuff too. That aside, MySql does have transactions and it does have foreign key constraints. Innodb has been around for a long time, you know.
MichaelGG 14y ago
As I've said before, MySQL's data handling is very much like VB's "On Error Resume Next".

by 16s 14y ago

AaronBBrown 14y ago

Can you provide some citations to this claim? I know a lot of people who understand ACID, Foreign Keys, and have experience with other DBs (like PostgreSQL) and still often choose MySQL based on its merits.

jiggy2011 14y ago
I think he is talking about "people who use mysql only because it was the easiest thing to learn" don't know these things, not "experienced DBAs/devs who happen to be using MySQL".
- spudlyo 14y ago
  Yeah, he's not talking about DBAs who work at Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube, Wikipedia or Twitter. Just because half the Alexa top 10 uses MySQL in production doesn't mean it's not just used by non-technical noobs who don't know any better.

taligent 14y ago

I really don't know where to begin with such a stupid comment. How about you start with listing which of these companies needs educating: http://www.mysql.com/customers/ http://www.mysql.com/customers/ Facebook ? Twitter ? Amazon ? Flickr ?

jacques_chester 14y ago
In some of these cases MySQL is not being used as an RDBMS. And in most of those cases it looks like path dependency rather than a selection based on the merits of this or that database. Either way, this is actually an argument from authority ("So and so use Brand X, therefore Brand X has positive qualities Y"). I've sat in on presentations with DB2 engineers who bragged about the data centre IBM runs for UPS. ~12 billion transactions per day (and that was 5 years ago). Does UPS make DB2 better or worse than MySQL? Answer: it's irrelevant. DB2 and MySQL would need to be picked on their merits, not their users.
- LaGrange 14y ago
  It does invalidate claims that using product X is going to inevitably cause you huge problems once you "grow enough". I've seen a lot of places grow a lot while using MySQL, and the problems aren't really that different or more serious than in places using Postgres or Oracle. In fact, I know enough places moving from Postgres to MySQL due to growing pains.
  - jacques_chester 14y ago
    Right, but we're not talking here about scale. We're talking about ... trustworthiness, I suppose. Dependability. What this article demonstrated is that MySQL will often give a false sense of security. That's not what you want from a system ostensibly meant to provide a number of important technical guarantees. Multi-master is the one tickbox feature where MySQL is still clearly in front. Once the PostgreSQL team finish going about inbuilt multi-master in their usual meticulous, stepwise fashion (my WAG is that it'll land by 9.6), there really won't be any good technical reasons left to use MySQL.
    - LaGrange 14y ago
      But I didn't mean "grow" in exclusively performance meaning. I meant the whole package (as with growth the requirements for reliability also ultimately show up, at least in some parts of the business). Even my current job that involves a lot of MySQL has important chunks of Must Never Go Away Or Else data, with a lot of complex insert/update action going on them, and somehow it's working fairly well for us.
justinjlynn 14y ago
The analogy goes like this: If you're very rich, you can do horrible drugs and pay a veritable army of people to keep you presentable and working. Of course, this until one day it doesn't. Being large and successful doesn't mean that there's nothing festering deep within. Companies and people can become so invested in previous solutions that the perceived benefit versus the cost of switching is almost always too low to gather enough political will to execute. MySQL is a drug, when you start it is cheap and available, but as you grow as you hope you will, you start to need more and more. Of course, this exposes many of the flaws and problems of the drugs you were on and if you're in a bad way, still are. Better to go through a bit of pain now and know what you're in for than to just use MySQL because facebook, twitter, amazon, and flickr can pay a huge team of people or large consulting firms to make their technology decisions actually work. If you really must, use MySQL to spike the product but know the side-effects and know when to get the hell off it.
twerquie 14y ago
He's clearly talking about people new to databases who choose MySQL because of its ubiquity, not seasoned engineers and large companies operating legacy applications. > Facebook ? Twitter ? Amazon ? Flickr ? I imagine none of these companies would choose MySQL if starting from scratch today.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

troels 14y ago

I've been using MySql for the most of my career, and I did learn about relational algebra, normal forms and whatnot back in school, thank you. It's my experience that most programmers I have worked with knows about this stuff too. That aside, MySql does have transactions and it does have foreign key constraints. Innodb has been around for a long time, you know.

MichaelGG 14y ago

As I've said before, MySQL's data handling is very much like VB's "On Error Resume Next".