[Dbix-class] any factual comparisons of Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL ?

[Calle Dybedahl]

On 13 apr 2011, at 20:56, Stephen Clouse wrote:

> I know you're looking for unbiased/objective facts, but as someone who at one point made a decision to go with Oracle, I'll advise you to run far away from it.  It is a decision you'll regret in the long term.  It's insanely expensive for anything but the most trivial installation, it's a resource hog (which contributes to its cost), and their "support" has to be some of the worst in *any* industry (especially given the exorbitant per annum fee for it).  

While I agree with everything you say here, I'd like to add that in my experience Oracle at least does what you want it to. Yes, it's hideously expensive, but at least it works. 

> 
> Everything Peter said about MySQL is true.  While I don't think MySQL technically is a bad choice (depending on your needs), 

For the past 6-7 years, I've worked as a consultant in a lot of development projects, nearly all of which involved MySQL for historical reasons. My role in the projects have varied, from architect to troubleshooter. My opinion, based on long and painful experience, is that MySQL technically is a *horrible* choice. If you care about keeping your data consistent, do not use it. You can never rely on MySQL honoring constraints, so you have to do all your data integrity checking in the application. As a trivial demonstration, create a table with a NOT NULL Text column and then insert an empty row. MySQL will happily do as you say, putting an empty string in the Text column. It is possible to bludgeon MySQL into nearly being reliable, but it's not the default behavior and it will vanish at the slightest mistake.

On top of that, it's slow as molasses if your queries are at all complicated. Many features are bolted-on afterthoughts that don't work very well (including views and subselects). Oh, and let's just mention their insane authentication system that can leave you logged in as another user than you asked for if you connect from the wrong host.

MySQL should not be used. It should be taken out back and shot.

> PostgreSQL is pretty much in lock-step with Oracle feature-wise, but without the cost or the baggage.  It gets significantly better with each release (not that it needs improvement), and the community support is phenomenal.  You really can't go wrong with choosing it.

I agree with this. 

-- 
Calle Dybedahl
calle at init.se -*- +46 703 - 970 612