Sun does Google's dirty work on MySQL

Postgres an "alternative"?

I don't see Postgres as a direct alternative to MySQL. Sure, there's overlap, but MySQL has and always will have the edge in the web environment where speed and ease of use and installation has been it's strengths.

With so much more web technologies out there, and with the web "platform" becoming more widely used, and more flexible in what it can offer, I don't see MySQL's market being eroded by Postgres to any significant extent.

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@Mr Poodle

"MySQL has and always will have the edge in the web environment where speed and ease of use and installation has been it's strengths."

You obviously haven't tried PostgreSQL recently regarding ease of installation. As for the rest: speed may vary wildly depending on your data model - PostgreSQL usually runs faster for me - but the main reason for any RDBMS should be data integrity and PostgreSQL is ahead there by miles.

@Andrew

Andrew, that would have been +1 insightful if MySQL was actually faster or easier to install and use.

And that's not me making that up, that is visible from published SPEC results. (http://www.spec.org/jAppServer2004/results/)

I happen to regularly meet the Sun guy that does all this testing (http://blogs.sun.com/tomdaly/) and know for a fact he doesn't have a bias. He actively works as coder on both, to try and make them go faster, regularly submitting patches.

Speed wise there isn't that much between them, though Postgres still has a massive edge on 4 cores or more, MySQL can't take advantage of those.

Also, on Linux it is the same, but the Windows installer for Postgres is actually better than MySQL's. (which might be taste)

The only thing MySQL has going for it is the enormous amount of books written and the ubiquity it seems to have because of LAMP. Which is strange because with the dual license MySQL isn't exactly free. (as in speech) Plus there are lots of options you have to pay for, like a thousand Euros for online backups in InnoDB!

So no, Postgres won't eat too much into MySQL's market share soon, but that has nothing to do with speed, technical ability or ease of use.

@Steve Mueller

Nice comment, but I would have thought it would be much easier to take up Postgres as an Oracle beater, as thats what its made to be.

And have you seen the initial memory requirements for MySQL?

Last time I compiled from source, PostgreSQL used 22Meg (including VM needs) of memory - MySQL? 115Meg! Given several hours, I was able to get that trimmed down to about 35Meg... but still. The reason for MySQL way back when was "small & fast." Now it has neither...

Makes me glad I started with Postgres all those years ago, and stuck with it; for me, MySQL has nothing but disadvantages now.

Laterz!

Application Support?

Large Enterprises tend to make strategic database decisions, and these are usually driven by the apps that run on them. People buy Oracle not just because it's fast, but also because it's so popular they know there will be several apps in a particular solution area capable of running on them, giving them a choice of vendor.

I can't help but think Sun should be going after Enterprise Software Developers in the Information Management camp in order to make inroads into Large Enterprises. E.g. ERP, BI, MI, ECM type vendors to help reduce their price point in the required underlying database, but give MySQL at the same time Enterprise credentials in the market. (I.e. the JBoss vs. WebLogic/WebSphere argument)

The software we sell at work runs on MS SQL Server (Enterprise vs. Ubiquitous, anyone? ;o) ), Oracle and DB2. I don't think I've ever heard of a deal being lost because we didn't support MySQL/Postgres. Funnily enough, this is probably because our customers realise that no Enterprise solution vendor for our type of software supports those two DBs.