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From: David Garamond <[email protected]>
To: Bruce Momjian <[email protected]>
Cc: PostgreSQL-development <[email protected]>
Cc: PostgreSQL advocacy <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] What can we learn from MySQL?
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2004 13:05:21 +0700
Message-ID: <[email protected]> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>

Bruce Momjian wrote:
> My question is, "What can we learn from MySQL?"  I don't know there is
> anything, but I think it makes sense to ask the question.

MySQL was my first introduction to SQL databases (I had dabbled with 
Clipper and Foxpro years earlier, but only for a couple of months and 
had forgotten most of it by then). So practically all I knew about SQL 
and RDBMS I got from the MySQL manual. IIRC, MySQL has a chapter for 
beginners, on how to create your first database and tables, how to 
insert a record, etc.

I see that the Pg manual already has that. Good.

The problem is that, since MySQL was my only SQL database I knew for a 
long time, I didn't know that an RDBMS can be [much] more than what 
MySQL was/is. I could only do simple SELECTs (no JOINs, let alone 
subselect since MySQL doesn't support it) but found it sufficient, since 
I did most of the hard work from Perl/PHP (for example, doing an 
adjacency tree query by several SELECTs and combining the results myself 
from the client side).

I didn't know squat about stored procedures or triggers or check 
constraints. I had no idea what a foreign key is -- and when MySQL 
manual says it's not necessary, slow, and evil, I believed it.

I never bothered checking out other databases until I started reading 
more about transactions, reliability, Date/Codd, and other more 
theoretical stuffs. Only then I started trying out Interbase, Firebird, 
SAPDB, DB2, Oracle, and later Pg.

So in my opinion, as long as the general awareness about RDBMS (on what 
tasks/responsibilities it should do, what features it generally has to 
have, etc) is low, people will be looking at MySQL as "good enough" and 
will not be motivated to look around for something better. As a 
comparison, I'm always amazed by people who use Windows 95/98/Me. They 
find it normal/"good enough" that the system crashes every now and then, 
has to be rebooted every few hours (or every time they install 
something). They don't know of anything better.

So perhaps the direction of advocacy should be towards increasing that 
awareness?

-- 
dave

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