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Re: [LUG] Databases

 

On 19/06/06, mike@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> Generally yes, I prefer working with Postgres, the syntax is simpler,
> >> and it tends to "do the right thing" by default. The only exception
> >> being the default security settings (which the Debian packagers sort
> >> when they create their package).
> >
> > As much as I use postgres for serious projects, I'd guess that you'd
> > find MySQL better suited to your needs -- Postgres still offers a few
> > "proper RDBMS system" features that MySQL doesn't but I don't think
> > you will need them.
>
> Outer Joins? - even Access has these.

Um.. I've never had a problem with any Join in MySQL - but then I've
been using 4.x, I think a lot of FUD from postgres users is way out of
date from early 3.x mysql releases.

> >
> > Also MySQL is far more user friendly and more likely to DWIM whereas
> > Postgres sticks very strictly to DTRT often making things harder than
> > they need to be.
>
> How?

autoincrements that just work without mucking about with sequences,
boolean is cast to integer automatically, you can specify a default at
the same time as a new field, you can just log in to the RDBMS without
having to specify a database to connect to, you can replicate without
add-ons, fulltext searching just works, you don't have to drop tables
to drop columns (finally fixed in 8.1 which isn't included in many
distro's yet), you don't have to run command line scripts before you
can use it, you don't have to fuck about with configuration files to
provide remote access as it has a simple single command to manage
access, the list goes on and on and on.

Oracle

> >
> > Postgres is also harder to administer and maintain and requires
> > add-ons to provide important stuff like replication, full text
> > searching, etc.
>
> please see http://sql-info.de/mysql/gotchas.html for examples of where
> MySQL does the "WRONG" thing without informing the user.

A quick look at the first gotcha shows that MySQL DWIM intead of the
pedantic unhelpfulness that you get with Postgres.. I also note that
http://sql-info.de/postgresql/postgres-gotchas.html is a bit on the
short side - I found a lot more gotcha's for postgres than that in a
week of porting my scheduler to it.

And this doesn't address the fact that Postgres is hardly 'enterprise'
when it doesn't provide a decent replication system.

> Can you please give examples of how pg is harder to maintain.

Let me see...
* Vacuum your db's or your data will be corrupted, and when vacuuming
expect your db server to crawl
* 10 minutes of faffing about after installing before you can log into
the bloody db
* seperate remote access control in hba_conf that requires restarting
the database to update access control
* DDL implementation is considerably less helpful and simple than
mysql or sql server - with plenty of annoyances like not being able to
specify the default value for a new field when updating a table, etc
* It's easy to screw up the database template when feeding sql to the
db from the command line so that a schema is created in the template
and hence any new database rather than the database you wanted to use.

> >
> > The MySQL Query Browser and Admin tools (available from the mysql
> > website) not only look good but give anything but Toad/Tora a good
> > kicking - postgres has nothing close to them.
> >
> off the top my head pgaccess/pgadmin/Base do anything I would want from a GUI

That's nice for you. I found them (when using them on somebody elses
machine because none would install on fedora) slow, ugly and lacking
features.

If you've used mysql, sql server or Toad/Tora then the postgres gui's
are like a step back 10 years or more.

A.

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