[jrcii]

Slightly tangential but I'm genuinely curious, does any have a theory as to why nearly every RDBMS post on Hacker News is about Postgres and almost never MySQL or MariaDB? Considering the relative obscurity of the former it seems somewhat inexplicable.

[esaym]

There's been a large migration off of mysql to postgres simply because Oracle got the rights to mysql when they purchased Sun. That is what made me consider, ditching mysql.

The final straw came when I stood up a mysql 5.6 instance to use as a data warehouse for about 5TB of data (15 billion rows). To my horror after spending a few weeks on this project I discovered that mysql only supported a small subset of the SQL language. Most of the needed sql features for data warehouse queries were simply not there (no WITH clause, no ROW_NUMBER(), only one sequence per table, no schema support, and many others that SQL report ninjas love to use)

With that I had to go back to management and convince them to put more time into the project so we could try again with postgresql. There was a large learning curve to go to postgres. It was just different in many areas, but at the same time, reminded me alot of IBM DB2 (both were a product of the 1980's if you look at the history). Postgres fit into our plans nicely, it actually had a full blown intelligent query parser and optimizer unlike mysql. From what I learned, mysql's purpose was to stop people from using text files as storage points in the early 2000's. But once you graduate from that, it's onward to postgres from there.

[simoncion]

> From what I learned, mysql's purpose was to stop people from using text files as storage points in the early 2000's.

Well shit, SQLite has that market sewn up these days.

[orf]

> after spending a few weeks on this project I discovered that mysql only supported a small subset of SQL

Did you not research this beforehand?

[esaym]

At the time, my basic experience with databases had been for normal developer CRUD type operations. I was just getting into BI analytics and stuff. MySql was kind of the defacto choice for a "free" database and it was kind of thrown at me. I didn't mind since I had used it for years and was familiar with setting it up. But no, assuming the thing with "SQL" in its name didn't actually support SQL was not on my checklist sadly.

[threeseed]

> There's been a large migration off of mysql to postgres

No there hasn't:

http://db-engines.com/en/ranking

Which makes sense since they aren't really playing in the same space. The benefits of PostgreSQL are largely lost on typical MySQL use cases (light load, simple CRUD access patterns, limited use of JSON/BSON etc).

[majewsky]

I question the method. They mostly measure search results, job offerings and tweets about the DB. And that could just as well mean a "MySQL is shit" tweet, an opening for a DBA that can migrate away from MySQL, and so on.

[nathan_long]

> Which makes sense since they aren't really playing in the same space. The benefits of PostgreSQL are largely lost on typical MySQL use cases (light load, simple CRUD access patterns, limited use of JSON/BSON etc).

What benefits do you see that MySQL has over PostgreSQL? What defines its niche?

[narrator]

The funny thing is is that the trend for analyzing data is going from doing things in SQL databases backed data warehouses with queries to running that stuff on clusters with Spark or Hadoop based solutions.

[ec109685]

If it can fit on a single machine, those technologies are not necessary.

[combatentropy]

> why nearly every RDBMS post on Hacker News is about Postgres and almost never MySQL

You'll see the same phenomenon on Slashdot.

MySQL is popular among a subset of programmers: web developers. In corporations, Microsoft SQL and Oracle are more popular. Further, MySQL is popular among a subset of web developers: those who use PHP. Among web developers who use Python, Postgres seems more popular.

My suspicion is that MySQL's popularity is tied to those web-hosting plans (1 GB of storage! 1 TB of bandwidth! 10 databases! $10/month!). They were almost always MySQL databases. Web hosts that offered Postgres databases were few and far between. This article corroborates my theory: http://rodner.blogspot.com/2008/01/what-makes-mysql-so-popul.... MySQL's company (which at the time was "MySQL" not Oracle) pushed it in at a critical time in the development of the web.

I have written applications that use: Postgres, MySQL, SQLite, Microsoft SQL, and Oracle. My favorite by far is Postgres. The strangest thing to me is not that MySQL is more popular than Postgres, but that anyone uses Microsoft or Oracle at all. Not only do they cost a lot, but from a purely technical standpoint they are worse.

[manigandham]

> Postgres, but that anyone uses Microsoft or Oracle at all. Not only do they cost a lot, but from a purely technical standpoint they are worse.

Based on what? Both commercial databases have incredible features, tooling and extensions that leave postgres behind. Postgres today doesn't even have a solid scale-up or scale-out strategy.

It does have nice SQL support and makes developer lives a little easier but this isnt anywhere close to making it the absolute winner technically.

[e12e]

I'm curious what you mean by Postgres not having a "scale-up" strategy. Are you saying that eg MS SQL works better with a few TBs of ram and 128 cores than Postgres does?

[manigandham]

Yes. Postgres famously has been single-threaded for queries for a long time. The upcoming version 9.6 is finally introducing some basic parallel scan/join/aggregate functionality.

MS SQL, Oracle and pretty much all the commercial databases are much farther along in scaling up and making the most of a single machine.

[jeltz]

The very article you are commenting on is about scaling up with PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL is excellent at scaling up with many small queries, but has problems with few large ones.

[manigandham]

This is a brand new commit, it's not today. There's been some good progress recently but Postgres historically hasn't been the best at scaling up, especially compared to the commercial engines.

[breakingcups]

I like and often use Postgres, but professionally use MSSQL a lot and I vastly prefer it for my use case. It has all the DB features I need for my products and it is easier to manage (when it comes to backups, for example). One could argue ease of use falls under a purely technical standpoint.

Could you elaborate a bit more on why you view Microsoft SQL Server as worse?

[combatentropy]

MSSQL's text comparison by default is case insensitive. Its limit clause is nonstandard (select top 10 * from . . .). Its syntax for other things, like trimming or casting, is just much more typing. Installing the driver on a Linux server is several times harder than Postgres. When I get the syntax wrong, all it gives me "General Error." The command-line tool to Postgres, psql, works much more smoothly and has many more features than MSSQL's tsql (and Oracle's isql, for that matter).

If you use MSSQL all the time, I have no doubt that you get along fine. You can get used to its ways, and most applications don't need features that aren't shared by almost all databases.

I didn't mean that if you use MSSQL then the app will always noticeably work worse than if you based it on Postgres. It's just that for someone who switches back and forth, MSSQL makes my life less enjoyable, provides no benefit, and costs a lot more money.

[brisance]

>>The strangest thing to me is not that MySQL is more popular than Postgres, but that anyone uses Microsoft or Oracle at all. Not only do they cost a lot, but from a purely technical standpoint they are worse.

A lot of decisions are made holistically instead of a "purely technical standpoint". In large companies where there are still IT departments (e.g. use of Active Directory), MS is still very much the de facto platform, and SQL Server is the "logical" choice.

[gaius]

Consider that PG is adding wait events in the upcoming 9.6 release, a feature Oracle has had for about 20 years...

[ptaipale]

I'm curious abour another thing: like the previous comment asked about MySQL and MariaDB, and your answer cuts away MariaDB from the quote.

However, the trend seems to be from MySQL to MariaDB. Red Hat and many other Linux distros, for example, have moved to MariaDB. It doesn't feature Larry Ellison. So why not address it?

[tomc1985]

While I love me some PG, SQL Server is nothing to sneeze at. Was fairly impressed with it, never had any serious issues on an under-specced server once occupied by terrible programmers

[ris]

"MySQL is popular among a subset of programmers: web developers."

Slapdash web developers.

Most web developers I know now consider postgres the base standard.

[fbernier]

I guess it depends on your own personal background, but PostgreSQL is far from 'obscure' and much more feature complete than MySQL nowadays.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

Why "nowadays"? I can't really remember a time when it wasn't. If anything, MySQL is far less incomplete than it once was (like, it even supports transactions now, which once was one of the most important reasons for using Postgres over MySQL).

[cwbrandsma]

MySQL is considered more "old school" and not great at being standards compliant when installed with default settings. See https://twitter.com/robconery/status/189086889486192640

Also, MySQL is run by Oracle...and Oracle a horrible company run by horrible people that behave horribly, and should never ever be trusted in any form. Any developer relying or Oracle code should not be trusted ever again, and Oracle consultants are the vilest form of life on earth.

Did I mention I don't like Oracle?

[morgo]

What you are describing is no longer the default configuration.

Say what you like about oracle, they have been a great steward of MySQL.

[thevibesman]

> oracle, they have been a great steward of MySQL

I'm not so sure everyone will agree with reports of closed source regression tests and source histories[1][2] (I know these stories are old)

[1]: http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/18/oracle-makes-more-moves-to-... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4400797

[sbov]

From what I can tell the mainline Linux kernel has code developed by Oracle, so you don't trust any developers that ever rely on Linux?

[jlgaddis]

I am in no way a fan of Oracle but, c'mon, that's a little over the top, don't you think?

[qaq]

Reminds me of a talk by Bryan Cantrill he talked a bit (I am paraphrasing) that he didn't believe that people could be purely evil and when looking into Larry Ellisson he actually discovered he donated several hundred mil. to a nonprofit (dedicated to prolonging human life). On closer look it turned the sole purpose of that nonprofit was working on prolonging life of one particular human namely Larry Ellisson. (while writing off the donation from taxes to boot :).

[the-dude]

One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison

[nickpsecurity]

I love it! Gotta try to remember that one!

[function_seven]

If only there was a mnemonic to help :)

[cellularmitosis]

Bryan Cantrill has a very hyperactive delivery when giving a talk. Personally, I love it, though it isn't for everyone. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bryan+cantrill

[ryanobjc]

A silicon valley amateur radio club recently moved their study and test sessions from Oracle to Google, because Oracle changed their non-profit rate to $2000/day for a room. Google doesn't charge as long as a contact employee takes responsibility for the meeting.

So yeah, Oracle, evil to the core.

[chillydawg]

Wait, Oracle are charging for access to their private offices and that's evil? I'm not sure I understand?

[cwbrandsma]

Absolutely a bit over the top (I have friends that are oracle consultants). But I still don't trust Oracle from a business practices level.

[jcoffland]

That's why there's MariaDB.

[matthewmacleod]

Postgres is widely regarded to be a good example of an open-source project – technically excellent, with a good codebase and community. MySQL has a history of being less technically sound – although it's certainly improved, I imagine it's left a bit of a legacy. In addition, the purchase of MySQL by Oracle probably makes many developers more skeptical of using it.

IME there isn't really a compelling case to use MySQL over Postgres, unless there's a specific environmental constraint.

[dorfsmay]

Your perception of PostgreSQL being obscure in comparison to MySQL is interesting... Most projects I've worked on use pg. My perception is that projects using MySQL do so because of history (project started in php and that was the default stack, it was faster at the time (before transactions), etc...).

[MBCook]

Besides the large popularity of Postgres, it seems to me (totally anecdotally) that they are more open about development than MySQL is. Or perhaps better at getting new developments noticed through PR than MySQL.

When a new version of MySQL comes out it's big news, but it seems like lots of the little day-to-day as it gets developed updates in Postgres get posted.

[wolf550e]

MySQL is the PHP of relational databases. You can do most things with it, but you don't choose it when you have the option to choose something better.

[ddorian43]

Because.... people that use postgresql are ~usually better developers, they care more + post more + upvote more.

[misframer]

Do you have evidence that you can share?

[ddorian43]

No. Just from all the devs that I've talked to, the ones that know more about rdbms prefer postgresql.

[jjawssd]

MySQL vs PostgreSQL - Why you shouldn't use MySQL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emgJtr9tIME

Self-explanatory, really.

[morgo]

lots of things happening in the MySQL world:

- a couple of weeks ago we released a document store (new protocol + connectors) based on protobufs

- last year 5.7 was released. Many new features, I have a list here: http://www.thecompletelistoffeatures.com

[skybrian]

Relative obscurity depends on the community. While there are a lot of MySQL installations, I'm under the impression there are more Postgres fans than MySQL fans on Hacker News these days.

[technion]

MySQL gets more than its share of popularity and discussion elsewhere. It's still the only supported Wordpress backend, which means it's the defacto web service backend for a large portion of the Internet. It's hard for more advanced users to find anything interesting and new about it.

[twic]

Are the MySQL or MariaDB communities publishing interesting stuff like this? That's a genuine question - i'm no longer a MySQL user, so i don't pay any attention to what's going on myself.

[morgo]

Yes. Mysqlserverteam.com links usually do not show up on HN, but we have similar benchmarks showing RO throughout to 1.6m qps on Intel

[chris_wot]

Postgres is hardly obscure.

[Alex3917]

It's because Python tends to be the most common programming language for startups due to being easy to hire for, having good library support for a wide range of use cases, being good for web development, etc. And MySQL is focused on catering to enterprise customers who don't use Python. The last time I heard, they had something like one person working part time on Python support, so the drivers weren't nearly as reliable as the Postgres tooling.

[simonw]

Python has had rock-solid, widely used MySQL libraries for well over a decade. I've never seen evidence that MySQL and Python aren't a strong (and popular) combination.

[fbernier]

Pretty sure there are more or at least as much startups using Ruby, JS, PHP, Java before Python.

[gnarbarian]

seems like that would be pretty tough to get reliable stats on something like that.

http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index

[rco8786]

Err, no. Python probably isn't even in the top 5 of languages startups choose for their main stack.

[bnchrch]

Not the most sound method but I was demonstrating the relative popularity of programming languages to my SO the other day using find in the Who's Hiring thread for May and python was the most popular.

Surprised me as well.

[superuser2]

A ton more companies have some Python scripts than Python as a primary development language; this skews naive keyword matching assessments of job postings.

[gaius]

What is then?

One thing that's always bemused me is that YC doesn't insist on its companies using Lisp :-)