[ic] postgres vs mysql (fwd)

Michael Widenius monty@mysql.com
Thu, 18 Jan 2001 20:05:36 +0200 (EET)


Hi!

>> What do you think about running postgress vs mysql and how difficult would
>> it be to change from Mysql to postgress.

Jeff>     The postgres versus mysql used to be very cut and dried.  Mysql was fast
Jeff> as heck, you would only use postgres if you needed transaction support.
Jeff> Now, with postgres 7, every indication I have personally seen and every
Jeff> discussion I have read on the issue indicates that postgres 7 runs circles
Jeff> around mysql from a speed perspective.  I don't really see mysql going
Jeff> anywhere at this point, adding in transactional support would be the next
Jeff> logical step but apparently one the development team is not willing to make
Jeff> and it would certainly come at a serious performance price.  The only issue
Jeff> I have ever encountered with postgres is a lack of blob support but that is
Jeff> not relevant to interchange.


We just released the next release version of MySQL, 3.23 and it has a
lot of new major features including support for BDB tables, which
gives us transaction.  It's true that MySQL don't have all features
that PostgreSQL has, but it's also true that PostgreSQL doesn't have
all the features that MySQL has.

MySQL does however have the benefit that you can run with and without
transactions and gives the application the possibility to decide
between speed or safety.

We have also benchmarked PostgreSQL 7.0 and even if they have improved
a lot of things, the are still VERY slow compared to MySQL in most
cases.  You can find a comparison at:

http://www.mysql.com/information/benchmark-results/result-mysql,pg.html

(We did also try to benchmark 7.1, but run into problems while doing
this so we are waiting for a new PostgreSQL release before trying to
do this again)

We know that some recent published comparisons between MySQL and
PostgreSQL has given better results for PostgreSQL for some types of
queries when done by multiple threads, but we haven't seen a single
repeatable one where they have used a late MySQL 3.23 version and a
up to date operating system.

For many of the applications MySQL is used today, PostgreSQL is in
practice way too slow!  I also know of situations where PostgreSQL is
faster than MySQL, but this is a little beside the point;  The simple
truth is that there is a need for many different databases and neither
MySQL nor PostgreSQL can be best for all of these.

Regards,
Monty