The State of MySQL: The Elephant in the Room

When FreeBSD was released, at 27 Feb 2008, Kris Kennaway posted a nice slideshow that includes some PostgreSQL and MySQL benchmarks:<p><a href="http://people.freebsd.org/~kris/scaling/7.0%20Preview.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://people.freebsd.org/~kris/scaling/7.0%20Preview.pdf</a><p>Database-wise, they should be still considered recent. PostgreSQL features impressive scaling there.

I just launched a Windows-Apache-Postgres-Python/Django stack on EC2 using Elastic block for the postgres database storage. That install worked like a charm, and I'm running www.cuuute.com on it right now.<p>I had an urge to try MySQL as a database, and I found an installer bug that broke the installation and messed up my server. The installer died giving me a "MySQL can't install as a service" error, and then not allowing me to go forward. So, I did that a couple of times. I then realized that the installer had installed MySQL each time I ran the installer, but didn't complete it.<p>I Googled for an hour and couldn't find a resolution to the issue, just a bunch of forums= threads asking for help on the same problem for the past 9 months.<p>Postgres for the win. BTW EC2 + Elastic block rocks like Dokken for a WAPP setup.

I've always used Postgres, but don't think the copyright assignment thing is <i>that</i> big a problem. The FSF does that, and it seems to work out ok.

It feels good when your higher-quality, smaller bandwagon starts to overtake the giant, rickety one.

Wait, was there supposed to be some content in there? That post was basically flamebait. You can sum up everything useful in there with news that's already made the rounds, "MySQL founders left Sun."

My beef about MySQL used to be technical but in the last 3 - 4 years that has evaporated, and now it is purely about the license. I cannot understand why anybody uses a database for which the only official client side drivers are GPL, rather than (at least) LGPL. Unless you really truly intend that your own app will be licensed GPL and so will every other application / piece / component/ that ever needs to interact with your database in any way, it is a ball and chain around your neck which seems crazy to place there when there are other equally good alternatives.

At the moment, it's not even possible to download and install MySQL anymore.<p>I was setting up a Wordpress install a week ago, so I headed over to MySQL.org and hit the download link. They won't let you even download it without having your company "Reviewed" these days. So I filled out my info and was told I'd hear back when they were ready.<p>That was a week ago. No word back. I still can't even download it.<p>I could never understand anybody would use MySQL for anything business critical. Now it seems that nobody is allowed to use it for anything at all.

I have tried to search for MySQL vs. PostgreSQL benchmarks and most of them date to 2007. Are there any recent benchmarks that compare these databases?<p>I personally use MySQL and I think it's an OK database (performance and installation wise) and I think it's a bit risky to jump on PostgreSQL when most others use MySQL (e.g. Flickr, Facebook, Yahoo, Google just to name a few).

Postgres doesn't have native replication AFAIK - what are the state of the plugin projects that provide this functionality, and how do they rate against the MySQL clustering?

Relational databases are so overrated.