Re: Oracle vs Mysql

On 01/20/2004 01:29:25 PM, DENNIS WILLIAMS wrote:
> Back to MySQL and whether Postgres is the way to go,
>
> I can recall editorials debating whether Unix/Oracle would ever be
> industrial strength enough to support critical applications.
>
> The point the book "The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison"
> tries to
> make is that the technically superior product isn't always the one
> that
> succeeds. Often it is the one that is marketed better. A quick check
> of
> Amazon reveals several books devoted to MySQL, but I don't see any
> devoted
> to Postgres.

I have a book devoted to PostgresSQL at home. When I come home, I'll post the information.

> The story the author relates has to do with distributed databases.
> Ingres
> was developing a distributed database capability. Larry got wind of
> this and
> announced an new product "SQL*Star", that hadn't even been discussed
> within
> Oracle. When Ingres announced their product, the press asked "isn't
> than
> like Oracle's SQL*Star?".
> My point is that each time these free databases are discussed,
> people
> mention the fact that Postgres is superior from a technical
> standpoint. But
> from what I see, often it is the best marketed product that prevails.

Not often, it's the rule. After all, technical merits are not the only criteria. The company management usually wants to know whether they can get 7x24 support, what happens if a critical security flaw is discovered, how long will it take to get the solution, are there any training facilities or will they have to pay for the airplane tickets in order to train people. That is why I keep mentioning IBM. None of these two databases stands the chance of a snowflake in heck if the big blue decides to put its weight behind UDB on Linux. For a technically good product to succeed, it needs to fulfill the requirements of the corporate world.
That is why ElectroLux robot, despite the price tag of $3000 is more successful in the commercial environment then iRobot's Roomba, with the price tag of $200 (I love my Roomba, and it doesn't make any trouble). ElectroLux has service contract with Sears and the only thing you can do with Roomba is to pack it up and send it back. That is acceptable to me, but not acceptable to Hilton (and I don't mean Paris). It's exactly the same with the databases.

>
> Dennis Williams
> DBA
> Lifetouch, Inc.
> dwilliams_at_lifetouch.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 11:45 AM
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
>
>
> On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, eric king wrote:
>
> > I think he is talking about 100GB database. Can PostgreSQL and
> MySQL
> handle
> > that size? We used MySQL in some of the web projects, but it just
> stores
> > small set of operational data and later on those data are moved to
> Oracle
> as
> > a permenant store. For small set of data, MySQL is quite good, but
> it
> lacks
> > features such as foreign key constraints, triggers etc.
>
> I seem to recall reports of Monty (the creator of MySQL) supporting
> terabyte
> size databases with earlier versions of MySQL. Not sure what types of
> storage systems were used to achieve that, though.
>
> And to be fair, MySQL _does_ offer foreign key constraints (it used
> to
> not,
> though), but only (iirc) if you use the 'Innodb' table type. Now
> whether or
> not a database allowing some tables to have FK support and others not
> is a
> good proposition you'll have to judge for yourself.
>
> I still prefer Pg to MySQL.
>
> Fwiw,
>
> -- Dan
> ========================================================================
> Daniel Hanks - Systems/Database Administrator
> About Inc., Web Services Division
> ========================================================================
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> INET: hanksdc_at_about-inc.com
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