On Mon, Dec 01, 2003 at 10:27:22PM -0500, J.C. Wren wrote:
> mySQL may be free, and it is an excellent product, but other than in speed
> for simple transactions, you can hardly compare them. mySQL does not support
> triggers, nested JOINs (as of about 2 months ago), proper foreign keys, nor a
> handful of other slightly esoteric but frequently used database methods.
>
> I use mySQL for all my database work. But then, the DB stuff I do is pretty
> straight forward, and I rarely need anything more than it offers. I've
> messed briefly with postGres, which is verra nice, but was just too different
> to make worth switching.
>
> Oracle is expensive. But it's a lot more database than mySQL will be for a
> few more years.
MySQL should not be used, unless unavoidable, since there is an open
source RDBMS which is a lot better: PostgreSQL. For starters, it _is_ a
full RDBMS: Fully SQL92 compliant (and partially SQL99, working on it),
supporting triggers, rules, stored procedures, transactions, nested
queries, several programming languages for stored procedures (currently
PL/pgSQL, Perl, Tcl, Python), is very stable (pull the plug during
insert/update and the database _will_ recover, you'll just lose
transactions open during the power failure since the'll be rolled back),
works well under load (many users during insert/update/complex queries).
The last version 7.4 which was released a short time ago was again
seriously speeded up. And yes, it works for large databases - terabyte
sized instances have been seen.
I'm using PostgreSQL since a few years (playing with MySQL before that)
and I'm very satisfied with it. Also used it for the database in my
diploma thesis - MySQL would simply have not been up to it.
http://www.postgresql.org/presskit/en/presskit74.php
Regards,
Alex.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison
Received on Tue Dec 02 2003 - 00:43:07 GMT