[Server-devel] XS SW

[Martin Langhoff]

Hi Tim,

in brief - we cannot use such simplistic criteria. In absolute
numbers, Windows 200x Server may outnumber Linux installations out
there. We have much more serious factors to consider :-)

If you can produce (and document) a thorough MySQL vs Pg comparison --
with numbers and scripts so I can run the same comparison -- and it
shows MySQL to be better, then I am happy to reconsider. The areas
that I am mainly interested in are:

 - absolute reliability - the XS will most of the time "lose power"
rather than be shut down
 - performance in low mem configurations
 - performance overall

IME - working extensively with MySQL since '98 and with Pg since 2003
- is that Pg has _never_ seen a lockup or failed to start after a bad
shutdown / powerloss / disk corruption on me; and recent versions of
Pg mostly match performance of ISAM/MyISAM with small datasets and
simple SQL. Medium to large datasets, and complex SQL (which Moodle
uses extensively) make Pg shine.

This is to say - MySQL with MyISAM/ISAM tables is unacceptably
unrelaible. InnoDB may make MySQL more reliable, but it is
significantly slower are much larger on disk (or was when Moodle.org
attempted the switch and had to back out). Unfortunately, InnoDB is a
bit of a dead end because of Oracle, and Falcon won't be ready for a
while. It is a shaky track.

One argument for MySQL I have heard before in other projects is "wider
webapp support" - but to be frank I found that Pg support is a good
measure of quality. There is a ton of crap webapps out there, weekend
projects that are good enough for their developers, but not really
good for any serious use. The few good ones out there are portable
across DBs and OSs, have decent approach to security, have put
significant work into scalable code and APIs, etc ;-)

Does that help? If you really think MySQL passes muster - please give
us some concrete material.

cheers,


martin
-- 
 martin.langhoff at gmail.com
 martin at laptop.org -- School Server Architect
 - ask interesting questions
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