use Perl

• Wow, the venom! (Score:2)

  by Dom2 (2981)

  Your experiences I find astonishing. As a PostgreSQL user going back some 5 years, and recently asked to port my company's application to MySQL, I find MySQL to be unbelievably opaque. Funnily, I could mirror your complaints almost exactly:

  • Why is MySQL so hard to set up? Admittedly, I'm compiling from source in our environment, but PostgreSQL just compiles and installs. MySQL takes 3 times as long to compile, and installs a load of crap like tests that I'm not interested in, even when using the clie
  • Re:Wow, the venom! (Score:2)

    by TeeJay (2309) on 2006.03.02 15:01 (#46412) Homepage Journal

    MySQL is WAY easier to install - configure, make, make install - no creating and su'ing to a special user to create the databases.
    
    "Why is the command line interface so appalingly bad? The help is non-existent on every instance I've connected to. psql at least gives you \h."
    
    myql allows you to switch, and show databases, list and describe tables and best of all quit is quit and help is help. Table names and fields are tab completed. Postgresql is grumpy and unhelpful compared. The source command allows you to run sql scripts without exiting and piping. The SQL Prompt is far easier and more powerful than psql.
    
    "Why the heck am I allowed to connect without being attached to a database? What on earth purpose does it serve? It's just confusing."
    
    It's not confusing - it's common sense, logging into 1 database to create another database or using command line scripts is confusing, as is describing users or add users that have nothing to do with the database you logged into.
    
    "Why is the documentation for MySQL so bad? It's full of random gibberish about previous versions that I don't use and don't care about. It rarely seems to get to the point. In contrast with the PostgreSQL documentation, which I find clear and to the point."
    
    In an alternative universe perhaps - the Manuals for 4.x and 5.x are seperate, and it's not uncommon to have to deal with databases on multiple versions, you can also access the manuals specific to a version. There isn't any gibberish in there and the examples and syntax are clearer than postgres. Of course thats subjective but hey.
    
    Postgres documentation worked examples are a bit sparse, on the whole I find MySQL's better again subjective.
    
    pgAdmin and pgAccess failed to compile and don't come anywhere near SQL Server, MySQL or Toad/Tora.
    
    On the whole its arcane and unpolished - the fact we have to use a heath-robinson contraption like slony for a core job of replication is pretty worrying, ditto the lack of a built in full text index, not to mention pgdump not working between versions.
    
    I'm sure that I'll get used to it once I've been bitten a few dozen times, but after using MySQL, Oracle and SQL Server it is truly a step back in time.

    --
    
    @JAPH = qw(Hacker Perl Another Just);
    print reverse @JAPH;

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    • Re:Wow, the venom! (Score:1)

      by Phred (5358)

      You can solve the pg_dump issue by grabbing the pg_dump from any 8.1.x version. It's been refactored to address the issue of not working between different versions.

      Slony is actually a robust replication mechanism for what it's worth. It doesn't handle schema updates all that well, but I don't think many replication systems do handle that well.

      There is at least one full text indexing system in the contrib tree with the source.
    • Re:Wow, the venom! (Score:2)

      by Dom2 (2981)

      "myql allows you to switch, and show databases, list and describe tables and best of all quit is quit and help is help."

      Just like psql, apart from quit/help.

      "Table names and fields are tab completed."

      Maybe in your version. For me, psql completes, mysql doesn't. And it gets ^W wrong to add insult to injury.

      "The source command allows you to run sql scripts without exiting and piping."

      In psql it's spelled \i. Try \? for some help on the psql commands.

      "The SQL Prompt is far easier and more powerf
      • Re:Wow, the venom! (Score:2)

        by vek (2312)

        he last time I looked at PostgreSQL, I liked what I saw but the lack of reliable out-of-the-box replication was a showstopper. I was quite surprised that PostgreSQL was lagging behind MySQL & Oracle in that area. PostgreSQL for me therefore is fine for simple apps on a single database host, but once you move into something a little more advanced with multiple redundant database hosts sitting behind a load balancer, replication is a must have feature.
        
        I just had a quick peek at the online documentation
      • Re:Wow, the venom! (Score:2)

        by TeeJay (2309)

        I have used pgAdmin on other people's machines, it's slower, ugly and contains less features than the equivilent tools for Oracle (Toad/Tora), MySQL (mysql-query-browser, mysq-admin) and SQL Server. PGaccess runs but lacks most of the features I'd want.
        
        Trying Squirrel, I found that it can't find the jdbc classes for anything and is slow, ugly and clunky - but thats Java's fault rather than Postgres :)

        --
        
        @JAPH = qw(Hacker Perl Another Just);
        print reverse @JAPH;