What's That Noise?! [Ian Kallen's Weblog] What's That Noise?! [Ian Kallen's Weblog] All | LAMP | Music | Java | Ruby | The Agilist | Musings | Commute | Ball Main | Next day (Dec 7, 2008) » Saturday December 06, 2008 MySQL vs. PostgreSQL (again) If Kevin Burton wanted to draw attention to MySQL's inattention to scalability concerns, it looks like he's succeeded (126 comments on Reddit in the last day and climbing). I totally understand why he feels that the MySQL folks need to be provoked into action. I'll confess to having serious "MySQL fatigue" after years of struggling with InnoDB quirks (we use MySQL extensively at Technorati), stupid query plans and difficult to predict performance inflection points (there's a calculus behind table row count, row width, number of indices, update rate and query rate -- but AFAIK nobody has a reliable formula to predict response times against those variables). Frankly, I was really surprised when Sun acquired MySQL (for such a hefty sum, too), I was expecting them to build up a PostgreSQL-based platform by rolling up acquisitions of Greenplum and Truviso. Kevin is totally correct that to find solid innovation with MySQL, don't look to the MySQL corporation. Instead, the consultants and third party shops specializing in MySQL are where the action's at (Palomino DB, Percona, Drizzle, etc). It's kinda sad, both Sun and MySQL have at various times been home to hot-beds of innovation. Sun has great people groundbreaking with cloud computing, impressive CPU performance per watt improvements and the Java ecosystem. But as far as MySQL goes, look to the outside practitioners. Kevin's post update cites the pluggable back-ends that MySQL supports as a feature but I'm not so sure. I don't have any evidence of this but my intuition is that it's exactly this feature that makes the overall stability and performance such a crap-shoot (or sometimes, just outright crap). I'm working on a personal project that uses PostGIS (PostgreSQL + GIS), nothing is live yet so I haven't had to scale it. But I have a good deal of confidence in the platform. Skype and Pandora look like good case studies. The PostgreSQL people have been focused on MVCC concurrency, procedure languages, UDFs and data integrity semantics for years. In those realms, the MySQL people are Johnny-come-slowlies (and buggily). On the other hand, if you want the append-only characteristics of logging to a database, MyISAM and merge tables have performance properties that PostgreSQL just can't match. Maybe David Duffield will look beyond enterprise app services and acquire, roll-up and market the PostgreSQL platforms that Sun didn't. Combining big data and event data with Greenplum and Truviso as a way to blow some smoke in Larry Ellison's eye, that would be funny (and smart). postgresql mysql greenplum truviso sun workday postgis ( Dec 06 2008, 12:08:20 PM PST ) Permalink Contact: spidaman < at > arachna.com Technorati Who? I'm Ian Kallen. I'm an entrepreneur and technologist working on Blockboard. My technical interests are focused on mobile, location, cloud computing, big data, real time event systems, search, devops and agile web application code. I'm a long time open source enthusiast and enjoy right-sizing code architecture and infrastructure with the scope and stage a technology startup is operating at. Previously, I was an independent technology consultant. Prior to that, I did a long stint with Technorati leading the Core Services engineering group in architecting a backend to support search and exploring the web as it changes in real time. I have an eclectic background in technology, publishing, social software and ... life. I like to think: well rounded. I have been online participating in virtual communities since 1988 and developing online resources, services and systems as well as enterprise software since 1991. Once in a while, I have time and inspiration to blog. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of any present or past employers. KTHXBAI Feed: Twitter Google Reader Facebook LinkedIn If you like what you read here and want to help my kid's college fund, thanks! ? 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