Re: hosers-talk: MySQL vs PostgreSQL vs Oracle 8i

[Jon Stewart <stew1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Which is better?  Opinions?  Most interested in high performance speed, 
> reliability and portability.


That's like being interested in women who are intelligent, low
maintenance, and well-endowed.

I don't know much, but from what I understand, MySQL is usually 
competitive with commercial databases when it comes to raw speed, but it 
lacks a lot of functionality. I don't know much about Postgres except that 
it has more functionality than MySQL.

I do know that Oracle probably has more functionality than any other 
database and, if it's not the fastest, it's fast enough. The big selling 
point for Oracle is that is has full ACID compliance, which basically 
means that it's very stable and reliable -- transactions never get 
half-done in Oracle; they're either fully performed, or, if, say, your 
RAID system dies halfway through a transaction, they're fully rejected 
(then it crashes, but never in a corrupted state). It's for this reason 
why Oracle costs a lot of money and is used by businesses which deem their 
data critical. We use Oracle at Holden's, though I don't do much with it.

Also, I hear you get pretty good support from Oracle.

MySQL can't come close to Oracle when it comes to being fully reliable, 
but, hey, it's free.



Jon
-- 
Jon Stewart
stew1@xxxxxxxxxxx

"Survey says: it was a bad idea in the first place."

	-- The Dismemberment Plan