RE: [tlug] Red Hat dropping MySQL

[patrick.niessen@example.com]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stephen J. Turnbull [mailto:stephen@example.com] 
> Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2004 1:38 PM
> To: tlug@example.com
> Subject: Re: [tlug] Red Hat dropping MySQL
> 
> 
> >>>>> "patrick" == patrick niessen <patrick.niessen@example.com> 
> >>>>> writes:
> 
>     patrick> Great admin and development tools (but they require a
>     patrick> windows platform),
> 
> There's an oxymoron for you!

How is that? The great admin and development tools with bells and whistles
run on windows, while the actual server software runs on Linux / Unix and
provides command line administration.  These tools provide extra value but
are not essential.
 
>     patrick> and you get something that includes everything from
>     patrick> views, to triggers and stored procedures and hot standby
>     patrick> replication.
> 
> AFAIK PostgreSQL provides all of that, except that it 
> _doesn't_ require a Windows platform.  Plus extensive 
> documentation and available user experience on C-level 
> extensions etc, already integrated into all the usual 
> suspects (including PHP).

You mean PostgreSQL do not provide the luxury of remote administration and
development from windows out of the box, instead you have to get third party
tool.  Yes I know for every package that is mentioned in this list, someone
comes and says "yeah, but tool x is already there and better than all other
solutions anyway".  Four years ago I compared mysql and postgres, and there
were some issues that made me choose mysql in the end.   For a small site
any one of those two may be fine and get the job done without anybody
noticing any difference.  But when some serious money is involved, perhaps
it is prudent to choose a proven enterprise level database?  If I had MaxDB
2 years ago, I would have saved a lot of money by using it rather than DB2.


Personally I have come to dislike the snobbish attitude of some PostgreSQL
developers. Endlessly slagging MySQL, and even saying that the OSS
developers are stupid to use MySQL because if everyone would only
concentrate on PostgreSQL instead, then it could easily beat Oracle and IBM.
MySQL may not be perfect, but as long as you know the limitations you can
get the job done nicely.

> How long has this been free software?  If the answer is "not 
> long", and the underlying code base really is good, you will 
> have to wait for a user community to build up, but it will be 
> worth the wait.

SAP-DB as it was formely known has been around for a while (included in Suse
6.x even if I remember correctly).  A proper OpenSource initiative came a
bit later.  The cooperation with MySQL is mainly a kind of relaunch, with
MySQL promising to drive the development.  Not a bad deal for them: Select
performance oriented customers can stick with MySQL, and people who need
enterprise features and "atomic transaction" support, can go with MaxDB.
SAP has certified their software to run on Linux / MaxDB, so we can expect
pretty good reliability.  Most developers seem to be German SAP customers
who mainly exchange themselfs on that company's support site.  Thats why not
much is in the Public Domain yet.

> 
>     patrick> On Linux you can use the web interface or command line
>     patrick> admin tools but apparently they are hiddeous to use.
> 
> Heh.  Web interfaces do truly suck, but command line tools 
> can usually be beaten into shape with a line or two of shell script.
> 

Unfortunately, the cli seems to come from the mainframe age, the underlying
engine being related to ADABAs-D (?).  The reviews I read were very bad.  Of
course if you put in the hours you can do nice scripts to simplify it.