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This survey (which seems more thorough) has MySQL ahead of Postgres: http://db-engines.com/en/ranking http://db-engines.com/en/ranking Ranking methodology: htt

by jasondc 12y ago

This survey (which seems more thorough) has MySQL ahead of Postgres: http://db-engines.com/en/ranking http://db-engines.com/en/ranking Ranking methodology: http://db-engines.com/en/ranking_definition http://db-engines.com/en/ranking_definition Google trends also shows MySQL above Postgres in popularity: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F05ynw%2C%20mysql&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F05ynw%2C%20mys...

Someone1234 12y ago
I legitimately don't understand how Oracle remains so popular. I mean, I use it at work, but that is because this project dates back to the late 1980s(!) and decisions were made 20+ years ago. It doesn't even support a Boolean type(!), costs a ton (over 2x MS SQL, 4x Postgres), passwords are limited to 30 characters, up until 2007 passwords were case insensitive, error feedback is "basic," and the syntax is horrific. Oh and don't get me started on how poorly Oracle maps to programming languages. number(9,0) and number(18,0) is not an intuitive way to map into int32 and int64! Microsoft's bigint, int, smallint for 64, 32, 16 respectively is far more intuitive.
- jacques_chester 12y ago
  Once you're married to an RDBMS, it's difficult to move off. And Oracle was first to the market. If you're a F500 with your general ledger in Oracle, it's just easier to pay a few million dollars for a known evil than to spend who knows how much to replace it with a raft of potential difficulties during a migration project. After working with it for a few years I hate Oracle as much as the next developer, but most of the time business decisions are made for business reasons, not technical reasons.
- CHY872 12y ago
  Mm, my understanding is that it's for a few reasons: - Oracle have good name recognition (no one ever fired for using Oracle), presumably an army of support people, well trained consultants, etc. - Postgres traditionally has not been as perforrmant, which makes it less useful for very large datasets. - Furthermore Oracle perf can usually be improved further by hinting properly, which is not possible in Postgres. Certainly moving like-for-like onto postgres simply led to perf regressions. I'm not an expert, but those were my main takeaways from talking to people who are.
  - collyw 12y ago
    "Nobody ever got fired for buying Oracle" perhaps?
- parasubvert 12y ago
  Oracle remains popular because people are buying it for very different reasons than you bring up. Most of those matters (data types, really?) are trivial compared to things like its approach to clustering, partitioning, indexing, replication, OLAP queries, approach to locking, query optimization, and recovery. Having DBA'd and developed against Sybase, Oracle, and SQL server, Oracle remains both magnificent and horrific in its comprehensiveness. That said, SQL server is quite competitive. I still prefer Oracle to the others, I presume it's just a personal preference. Postgres or MySQL are fine alternatives if you really only need a small subset of the features. Trouble is, most enterprises like to throw on the pork with most projects.

by jasondc 12y ago

Someone1234 12y ago

I legitimately don't understand how Oracle remains so popular. I mean, I use it at work, but that is because this project dates back to the late 1980s(!) and decisions were made 20+ years ago. It doesn't even support a Boolean type(!), costs a ton (over 2x MS SQL, 4x Postgres), passwords are limited to 30 characters, up until 2007 passwords were case insensitive, error feedback is "basic," and the syntax is horrific. Oh and don't get me started on how poorly Oracle maps to programming languages. number(9,0) and number(18,0) is not an intuitive way to map into int32 and int64! Microsoft's bigint, int, smallint for 64, 32, 16 respectively is far more intuitive.

jacques_chester 12y ago
Once you're married to an RDBMS, it's difficult to move off. And Oracle was first to the market. If you're a F500 with your general ledger in Oracle, it's just easier to pay a few million dollars for a known evil than to spend who knows how much to replace it with a raft of potential difficulties during a migration project. After working with it for a few years I hate Oracle as much as the next developer, but most of the time business decisions are made for business reasons, not technical reasons.
CHY872 12y ago
Mm, my understanding is that it's for a few reasons: - Oracle have good name recognition (no one ever fired for using Oracle), presumably an army of support people, well trained consultants, etc. - Postgres traditionally has not been as perforrmant, which makes it less useful for very large datasets. - Furthermore Oracle perf can usually be improved further by hinting properly, which is not possible in Postgres. Certainly moving like-for-like onto postgres simply led to perf regressions. I'm not an expert, but those were my main takeaways from talking to people who are.
- collyw 12y ago
  "Nobody ever got fired for buying Oracle" perhaps?
parasubvert 12y ago
Oracle remains popular because people are buying it for very different reasons than you bring up. Most of those matters (data types, really?) are trivial compared to things like its approach to clustering, partitioning, indexing, replication, OLAP queries, approach to locking, query optimization, and recovery. Having DBA'd and developed against Sybase, Oracle, and SQL server, Oracle remains both magnificent and horrific in its comprehensiveness. That said, SQL server is quite competitive. I still prefer Oracle to the others, I presume it's just a personal preference. Postgres or MySQL are fine alternatives if you really only need a small subset of the features. Trouble is, most enterprises like to throw on the pork with most projects.