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

[Matija Grabnar]

> 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.

I can see how people can like Postgresql more than MySQL - but this 
statement is really going a bit too far.

Yes, you can put an empty string into a NOT NULL text column. You can 
also put a zero
into a NOT NULL int column. Both are legitimate values for the type. And 
no, mysql will NOT
accept a NULL value in a NOT NULL text column.

mysql> create table foo (a text not null);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.05 sec)
mysql> insert into foo values (NULL);
ERROR 1048 (23000): Column 'a' cannot be null
mysql> insert into foo values ('');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

There may be areas where Postgresql is better than MySQL, but at various 
times I've found
MySQL to be vastly faster than Postgresql for the same data: Because I 
knew I would be handling a LOT of data, I benchmarked both with a 
real-life sample of my data and a real-life mix of operations on them. I 
suggest that, if you're serious about picking the right database, you do 
the same.