I’ve been job hunting, and while my dream job would be somewhere that uses PostgreSQL, I am having an extremely hard time finding anyone that uses it. So, I think my chances might be better actually getting a company to convert to using it instead. In doing that, I’ve started outlining a draft of a paper that I can present to both lead programmers, database administrators, and management on the pros of using PostgreSQL over MySQL. If anyone has some ideas that I could add in, I would appreciate it.
Here’s the general principles I already plan on covering: foreign key support, data types, transactions, shell interface, ANSI SQL support, table types, general features, history, licensing, abstraction layers (using PHP).
Also, and I don’t mean to sound like I’m spreading FUD, but it occurred to me this morning that I’ve never heard anyone say that MySQL is better than PostgreSQL.
Anyway, ideas welcome. I’ll post my progress as I get the paper put together. This is something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time.
I think this is a good idea.
I really wish I could get us moved off of MySQL to PostgreSQL here at $DAYJOB.
You’ve looked here, I hope?
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/
Several reasons, in no particular order:
1) Sane licensing. PostgreSQL is free, period. Should you want to mod MySQL, for instance, for commercial reasons, in some instances it can get sticky.
2) Better support for complex SQL (where “complex” == “anything but really simple SQL”)
3) *MUCH* better support for stored procedures, including procedures written in languages your developers are likely to understand (Perl, Python, PHP, Java, even (shameless plug) LOLCODE).
4) You don’t even have the option of screwing yourself with ISAM tables 🙂
This is what comes to mind right off…
I also think this is a great idea, especially if you can manage to avoid the FUD trap. It’s surprisingly easy to wind up sounding that way – even when you have no intentions of doing so :/
I think table inheritance, tsearch2, and point in time recovery are really nice features.
Best of luck
We use both at my work. MySQL for the old stuff, postgres for the new, with a very slow migration between the two.
Also of interest for you pgpool2 (compare to NDB).
here are some other features that i enjoy with pgsql: stored procedures, table inheritance and postgis is killer. I have used postgresql to build a killer image map system similar to google earth. postgresql is where it is at.