Comments on: Sun buys MySQL – what about PostgreSQL?

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 20:57:42 +0000

I like these two posts. I wonder if Sun has plans in the mentioned direction:

http://www.jroller.com/dk/entry/bundlingjavaglassfishwithmysql http://www.jroller.com/dk/entry/ltfollowupon_jlamp

By: Marcus

Marcus — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:41:18 +0000

Tony,

Should I take your comment as you think they will drop support for PostgreSQL?

By: Marcus

Marcus — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:39:56 +0000

Enrique,

While you might be right in theory, I do not believe Sun thinks it has bought itself a 1 billion dollar toy.

And to be fair - MySQL is a lot better than Access.

By: Tony Petruzzi

Tony Petruzzi — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:31:20 +0000

Jon Gilkison hit the nail on the head. PostgresSQL doesn’t have a company behind, hence there is nothing to purchase. MySQL AB has quite a few companies that purchased their commercial license and support packages. Bottom line, there’s revenue to be made with the MySQL AB purchase.

By: Enrique

Enrique — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:27:45 +0000

I think that MySQL and PostgreSQL target two very different DB use cases, much in the same way there’s a difference between MS Access and Oracle. One is a lightweight, toy-DB, and the other is heavier but much more powerful. Why can’t you have two different favourite DBs depending on the application you’re working on?

By: Marcus

Marcus — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 08:08:03 +0000

Michael, Jon

It goes without saying that Sun most certainly prefer MySQL over anything today. And you can't buy PostgreSQL (good thing actually). My question is just what will happen with their support for PostgreSQL which up until this point has been very strong.

By: MySQL

MySQL — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 06:02:41 +0000

MySQL is not a relational database. This was a huge waste of money. It is the lowest common denominator for databases.

By: EllisGL

EllisGL — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 03:11:15 +0000

With the popularity of MySQL, the user base is a lot larger than PostgreSQL. MySQL has been really catching up with it’s 5.x releases in what it can do. I found MySQL a lot easier to setup and deal with (which was about 3 years ago).

I’ve seen that PostgreSQL can be faster – only when you introduce complex queries – but with the buy out – this might tighten the race.

Of course you do have PostGIS – which looks like it would help me a lot in my dev’ing…

Of course if I really needed speed – I would probably look more into InterSystems’s Cache DB (http://www.intersystems.com/cache/index.html)

By: Jon Gilkison

Jon Gilkison — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 02:34:09 +0000

They bought MySQL AB, the company behind it. AFAIK, there isn’t one company behind PostgreSQL in that way so who would there be for them to buy?

By: Michael Sync

Michael Sync — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 02:31:56 +0000

I strongly prefer PostgreSQL over MySQL

then, you can buy PostgreSQL. For the time being, I think Sun strongly prefer MySQL.