[geeks] MySQL question

[Phil Stracchino]

On Tue, May 25, 2004 at 12:30:09AM -0500, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> On Tue, 25 May 2004, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> 
> > Personally, I think MySQL, particularly MySQL4, is much maligned with
> > insufficient cause.  True, it's not appropriate for all uses.  But for
> > many, it's perfectly fine.
> 
> Possibly.  I was severely burned by MySQL 3.  And I've only briefly used
> MySQL 4.  It's supposedly better, but I've already moved all my non-read-
> only databases to PG.  Not only have I not lost data, but PG is -much-
> faster for the traditional transaction-based stuff that I work with.

*nod*

I know MySQL4 supports transactions.  (And many other things MySQL3
didn't, like for instance updates across mutliple tables.  I think it
still doesn't support subselects, but 4.1 is supposed to.) I don't know
how it compares speedwise on them compared to PG.


> > Or PHP, or ....    Oh, and let's use lots of Flash!
> 
> *puke*  Or some J2EE.  Some web duhveloper at $ork reimplemented ftp and
> lpr in J2EE as servlets because they "didn't trust IBM to do it right in
> AIX".

Oh gods.  *SMACKITY*

Could be worse.  They could be trying to do it in Jscript.

(only half joking)


> > Sorry if I overreacted.
> 
> S'ok.  It's something that's been in the air the last few months.
> Everyone's on-edge everywhere.

possibly something to do with the economy being weak, our job market in
the toilet, and employers exploiting us completely unashamedly while
they have us over a barrel?

> > (though also supporting, in the example of Bacula again, pgSQL and
> > SQLite)
> 
> I keep thinking that SQLite sounds like a really good idea, but I have a
> hard time getting past the fact that it's typeless.  I really need to
> sit down and play with it more.  Embedded RDBMSes are just wonderful for
> so many need-it-now applications.

*nod*  The SQLite support is in Bacula mainly for sites that don't have
an existing supported RDBMS and for some reason (politics, access,
whatever) cannot install one.

One of these days someone'll probably add in Oracle support.  Dan
Langille was instrumental in doing the PG port.

> Oh no, not at all.  It's just that even MS SQL[0] was a lot better RDBMS
> the last time I seriously used MySQL,

Eek.  That's a scary thought.

...actually I forget, who did MS buy their SQL engine from?  SyBase?

> and I still have memories of their
> first crack at transactions[1]--has that gotten any better?

Yes, it's much improved in 4.0.  Commits and rollbacks work as expected.
And with InnoDB, there's row-level locking too (since about 3.22.mumble)


> But I'm spoiled.  At work we have DB/2.  Mmmm.  Only IBM could make anal-
> retentive sexy.

Never touched DB/2 myself ...  don't know anything about it.

Sometimes I think SQL is about as much a standard as HTML is.



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