Re^2: [OT] Why I don't use Mysql for new projects

[perrin]

The problem is that very few people have actually used both MySQL and Pg in major performance-sensitive applications, so it's hard to get a good comparison. I have used Pg, but not as much as I've used Oracle and MySQL.

I can tell you a few things I like about MySQL, even though I can't really compare them to Pg in a meaningful way. I like how easy it is to administer. I like how fast the InnoDB storage engine is (faster than MyISAM for most of the work I do, even with transactions and foreign keys). I like the excellent documentation.

And finally, I like the fact that I know other people have done very serious work with it and succeeded. Yahoo, Google, Craig's List, LiveJournal... all of these companies use MySQL, and handle much more data than I need to. That gives me confidence that it can handle my work.

[doom]

There are certainly some big mysql success stories, but they tend to be in applications that aren't just that fussy about things like data integrity. Google is a case in point: they're doing really well with replicated myisam tables, but if something weird happened to the data no one is likely to even notice. It's not like, say, handling banking transactions.

[perrin]

Banks will all be running Oracle or Sybase. None of us are building banking applications with open source databases. However, Yahoo uses MySQL for stock market data, and users would certainly care if that data was wrong.

Also, Google released patches for InnoDB, which makes it pretty clear they aren't just using replicated MyISAM tables.

[erix]

It would seem Yahoo! agrees with moritz: they chose postgresql for this new project :)