I’m finding increasingly more arguments from the hardline geek crowd about MySQL no longer being relevant. That there are many new(er) modern open-source options and choosing MySQL is akin to betting on a three-legged horse. Where does all this static stem from? These haters expect me to believe the most popular open-source relational db platform is suddenly the red-headed stepchild? Sounds like someone has an axe to grind. But why?
I’m finding increasingly more arguments from the hardline geek crowd
about MySQL no longer being relevant. That there are many new(er)
modern open-source options and choosing MySQL is akin to betting on a
three-legged horse. Where does all this static stem from? These
haters expect me to believe the most popular open-source relational
db platform is suddenly the red-headed stepchild? Sounds like someone
has an axe to grind. But why?
I find a sort of odd snobbery among some of the database users. PostgreSQL is a very robust and mature RDBMS, with a lot of useful extensions on the basic SQL, as well as a very pedantic syntax that would appeal to someone raised on Oracle or another “long pants” database server. Its proponents can be messianic or just annoying, depending on their mood. I only ever have to use it when I host something on Heroku – I mostly just stick to MySQL for its read-speed and comfortable blue jeans syntax. Definitely not going to win any prizes from the Stanford CS department, but I am very happy with it.
I think it’s one of those things that people who care about which one you use have some reason besides “it works” in mind. Angels dancing on the head of a pin, maybe.
In Rails, it just doesn’t matter which database server you use, for most things. The intermediate layer (ARel) translates your queries into the most efficient SQL for the selected database server, be that SQLite, MySQL, Postgres, Microsoft SQL, Oracle; the list is fairly endless. The only time you would care is if you need to do something using a database specific trick, like sort a table randomly, where SQLite requires SORT BY RANDOM() and MySQL prefers SORT BY RAND(). For the ordinary queries, there’s no need to even know the specific syntax – that’s just coding to the metal, which is usually discouraged.
Walter
On Feb 24, 2013, at 12:16 PM, Todd wrote:
I’m finding increasingly more arguments from the hardline geek crowd about MySQL no longer being relevant. That there are many new(er) modern open-source options and choosing MySQL is akin to betting on a three-legged horse. Where does all this static stem from? These haters expect me to believe the most popular open-source relational db platform is suddenly the red-headed stepchild? Sounds like someone has an axe to grind. But why?
I get the impression that “not” (NoSQL) is the flavor-of-the-month so all the bleeding-edge “cool” kids have to jump on it and proclaim it king. What-e-v-e-r. NoSQL may be great for all I know but how exactly does that make MySQL a dog? (rhetorical)
Todd
I think it’s one of those things that people who care about which one you use have some reason besides “it works” in mind.
I get the impression that “not” (NoSQL) is the flavor-of-the-month
so all the bleeding-edge “cool” kids have to jump on it and proclaim
it king. What-e-v-e-r. NoSQL may be great for all I know but how
exactly does that make MySQL a dog? (rhetorical)
I think it’s one of those things that people who care about which
one you use have some reason besides “it works” in mind.
The primary disadvantage of MySQL is that it’s owned by Oracle. As
long as there are libraries to access a DBMS from your favourite
server-engine-accessible language it doesn’t really matter.
David
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David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
email@hidden www.ivdcs.co.uk