Nathan England wrote:
> Is PosgreSQL completely independent of other projects? Would it be  
> the better
> DB to use? Or does it still depend on the type of project you are  
> using it
> for? ie. mass transactions vs. mass reads

Disclaimer : I use MySQL every day, and I am very happy with it.   
Postgres also seems very well done, but I have only passing  
familiarity with it.

I agree there can be way too much hysteria and rumoring about this  
product or that product.  I would say you should list out the  
criteria which are important for you, and then make a determination  
about how the 2 products (Postgres and MySQL) measure on those criteria.

Some common ones :
  - performance
    Super Smack and Sysbench (benchmarking tools) can do benchmarks  
of both MySQL and Postgres, allowing you to do comparisons.  Writing
    your own set of tests to reflect the kind of activity you will  
really experience will be a lot more meaningful than any
    generic benchmark results you may find on the web.
    http://vegan.net/tony/supersmack/
    http://sysbench.sourceforge.net/

  - feature set
    Postgres is usually seen as the leader here, but MySQL's feature  
set is growing rapidly.  With MySQL 5, I think the gap has
    gotten pretty small for most things.  But it really depends on  
what you want.  ('Most things' might not include some feature
    you really need/want.)  List out what you're looking for, and the  
documentation will help you figure out how well either
    of them support what you want.
    http://www.postgresql.org/docs/
    http://dev.mysql.com/doc/

  - ease of use
    There's single way to quantify this... though many people will  
argue one side or another.  If you can install and try
    both, you'll probably develop a preference one way or another.  I  
don't think either package qualifies as difficult.

  - support resources available
    Both have good online documentation (cited above).
    Mailing lists exist for both, of course.
    If you need professional support, there are also options out there.

  - license
    As Rod said, MySQL's licensing has gotten a lot of attention.   
This hasn't ever been a problem for me, so I can't
    comment on the issue too much.  I'll just say it might be worth  
looking at.

  - dependency on 3rd parties
    You mentioned this as a concern.  I really don't have a lot of  
specific data, but you can definitely find out a lot with some Googling.
    I think the key is to be clear on what you're looking for before  
you start your search.  List out as much pro/con information as you
    can find for both products, and you'll probably come up with a  
reasonable answer.

I hope that helps.

alex
.
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