MySQL v. PostgreSQL, continued, was: Microsoft Access - two questions

[Thomas Charron]

On 7/31/07, Jon 'maddog' Hall <maddog at li.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-07-31 at 13:54 -0400, Paul Lussier wrote:
> > "Ben Scott" <dragonhawk at gmail.com> writes:
> > > I'm gonna have to start putting a "Please read and consider my
> > > entire message before replying" notice at the top of all my posts...
> > But that would eliminate much of the hilarity ensuing from those
> > who take snippets of your posts completely out of context :)
> I, for one, read and considered Ben's entire post before replying.
> However, since Ben had singled out stored procedures as one of the
> "annoyances" that MySQL did not have and in his next paragraph stated
> that MySQL had "improved with features", yet had not mentioned stored
> procedures, I surmised that he might be uninformed that not only has
> MySQL implemented "stored procedures", but that O'Reilly has published
> an entire book on the subject:

  Let's not forget that MySQL has reasonably recently gotten features
such as stored procedures.  Yes, they are now there, and are
functional.  But they aren't as mature as most other database systems.
 For example, in many cases a stored procedure on MySQL can actually
take longer then issuing simular commands directly via SQL, as the the
optimizations of stored procedures isn't as mature as that of the
equivilant SQL.  Triggers are rudimentary.  The concept of inheritence
is also relativly new.  Sequences are non existant.  Custom data types
are impossible.  O'Reilly tends to publish books on many things that
are being adopted, but many of these features are currently being
developed and 'aged'.  Peoples conceptions of MySQL as not being as
seriouse as say, PostgreSQL, is partially valid, simply because many
of it's features are not as mature.  It's not to say performance,
i.e., 'This ones faster', because that's going to change depending on
what your doing.  MySQL is faster in some things, slower then others.
It's stored procedures aren't as mature, and are currently slower.
It's selects can be much faster.  If I have an application requirement
for a database which is utilized to lookup existing data, MySQL is
certainly high on the choice list.  If I have a data architecture
where multiple methods of accessing and/or updating data will be
utilized, i.e., data bridges vs web collected data vs end user
applications, PostgreSQL is much higher on the list.

-- 
-- Thomas