Database preference?

Rails
1

Mysql or Postgresql? Or some other database.

What do you prefer and does it really matter down the road? Anybody have
disaster stories where you choose one and it turned out another would
have been better? Do you use different dbs depending on the job or do
you stick with the same one always?

2

Peter S. wrote in post #1014023:

Mysql or Postgresql? Or some other database.

What do you prefer and does it really matter down the road? Anybody have
disaster stories where you choose one and it turned out another would
have been better? Do you use different dbs depending on the job or do
you stick with the same one always?

I’m afraid that asking this question here on this forum (or any similar
forum) is probably going to leave you more confused than you are right
now.

As for me I typically use MySQL in production and SQLLite in
development. I do this for a couple of reasons, but primarily it helps
to keep my code database agnostic. Also, using SQLLite in development
makes things really easy and convenient.

As I said, I typically use MySQL in production, but that doesn’t mean I
think MySQL is the best database. PostgreSQL is probably the better
database. However, I know MySQL better since I’ve been using it longer,
and I find the setup and configuration of MySQL to be easier for me.

I’m also not a concerned about my choice since MySQL is serving the
needs of my application. Paraphrasing from something I read somewhere,
“If you haven’t yet deployed, then you don’t have a scaling problem.”

In other words choose the database that you feel most comfortable with
and use it. Chances are it will work out just fine. If it doesn’t, and
you’ve written clean database agnostic code, then you can switch to
something else once you’ve proven, with metrics, that your choice isn’t
doing the job.

3

On Sun, Jul 31, 2011 at 7:23 PM, Peter S. [email protected]
wrote:

Mysql or Postgresql? Or some other database.

What do you prefer and does it really matter down the road? Anybody have
disaster stories where you choose one and it turned out another would
have been better? Do you use different dbs depending on the job or do
you stick with the same one always?

A couple of points to note.

  • The Django community recommend PostgreSQL.
  • Heroku, the Rails deployment people, use PostgreSQL exclusively
    behind the scenes.

PostgreSQL usage has been growing steadily for many years and has more
open source contributors and mailing list posts than MySQL. PostgreSQL
consistently differentiates itself from MySQL by advanced features and
ease of use, as well as very low bug rates. MySQL was definitely the
more popular database 7-10 years ago but I’m not sure how to measure
that any more. PostgreSQL is 25 times faster than it was 7 years ago
and the latest version looks to improve on that by significant
margins. PostgreSQL’s feature set exceeds that of Oracle in some
areas, not just MySQL. PostgreSQL 9.1 should be available within about
2 months and includes fully synchronous log based replication.
PostgreSQL works well from <100MB to beyond 1TB databases.

I need to declare myself here as a PostgreSQL developer, though that
means I can provide additional details if required on any questions.

–
Simon R. http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services

4

Thank you both for the replies. I’ve had issues with PostgreSQL and it
seems like the main advantage of Mysql is ease of use. So I was
wondering if Mysql would make life easier. Anyway, the advice about
being database agnostic is good… always good to be flexible when you
can.

I’ll stick with PostgreSQL for now (as my issues are probably just from
lack of experience). It does seem like a lot of the interesting stuff is
being done on it. Oh, and looking forward to the 9.1 release.