On 4/16/06, Nathan England <nathan@paysonlinux.org> wrote:

All,

I'm not tottally up to date on the whole MySQL and Oracle problem going on, so
correct me if I'm wrong. MySQL is buying up companies to get a new DB engine
to replace the current one from Sleepycat, so that Oracle can't stop them in
their tracts... (?)

I think there's been a little too much rumor and innuendo surrounding this issue with little comment provided by the people at MySQL AB. So I think I would be careful of drawing too many conclusions from it. I'm not defending anybody's actions here, I'm just saying that there are a lot of people talking what-ifs, with little or nothing concrete behind it. Just my 2 cents. There's also been a lot of stray electrons expended over some of MySQL's licensing practices, but I'm not about to open that can of worms.

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

Well, like all software, Postgresql has it's set of dependencies, but as far as I know, there aren't any dependencies on third parties for functionality in the database itself. So, in that sense, I would say it qualifies as an independent project.

As for which one to use. Large flame wars have been fought over this. I've used both, and in my personal experience, I've found mysql a little easier to set up and maintain and a little faster for the projects that I've worked on, so that is my preference. PostgreSQL is more fully featured than MySQL (although the gaps in functionality are slowly closing) so if you need the extra functionality you should probably go with Postgresql. I think they are both good databases to use, and one of them is likely to be a better fit for a given project, but that's really a decision that you have to make based on a lot of different technical factors.