Just when you thought it was over.

Mike Bilow mikebw at colossus.bilow.com
Fri May 5 20:21:00 EDT 2000


I tried to be more polite than Ben Adida is on that page.  He writes:

   It happens almost every week, and sometimes more often: someone wants
   to know why we're not using MySQL as the RDBMS behind OpenACS. The ACS
   Classic team (ArsDigita) gets the same question over and over again on
   their Discussion Forums. If it's good enough for Slashdot, it must be
   good enough for OpenACS, right?

   Wrong. This quick paper attempts to explain why MySQL is not just the
   wrong choice for OpenACS, but how it should never be used by any
   system that handles critical data.

Other than the politeness issue, what he is saying is essentially the same
thing as I have been saying in this discussion.  He is entirely correct.

The comments after his article are amazing.  Is MySQL a religion?  I am
finally going to say, bluntly, that I can think of no legitimate reason
why anyone would ever want to use MySQL: it has a funny non-free license,
it lacks critically important features needed for almost any practical
use, and there are alternatives such as PostgreSQL which do not share its
substantial deficiencies.

-- Mike


On 2000-05-05 at 14:05 -0500, Randall Hofland wrote:

> OK, so MySQL is a great SQL server for fast downloads and
> PostgreSQL/Interbase is gonna be awesum for uploading files and general
> RDB building. So, tell me how to use the best of both worlds to build a
> uniform, well, no, not really uniform, let's just say diverse and
> unpredictable, relational database at low cost but with high reliability
> and functionality. Can I use MySQL just for the downloads from
> pre-estabished SQL files and then use PostgreSQL/Interbase product as a
> robust SQL server/RDBMS and use that for building the actual SQL files.
> Gee, I really like that idea! I need to buy another book!
> 
> John Jannotti wrote:
> 
> > How ironic, today on Slashdot:
> >   http://openacs.org/why-not-mysql.html
> >
> >   jj


-
Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with
"subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" on the first line of the
message body to discuss-request at blu.org (Subject line is ignored).



More information about the Discuss mailing list