In your dreams: MySQL nearing parity ...

Story: MySQL 4.1 moves in on OracleTotal Replies: 1
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TxtEdMacs

Oct 26, 2004
4:57 PM EDT
It was too painful reading this article - the claims are beyond reason given the current stage of development. Moreover, I thought MySQL goals never were to match commercial databases by feature set. Indeed from what I read elsewhere I got the idea that performance issues associated with web site processing were more important.

Lets get serious, MySQL does not even have stored procedures (and it was my impression they were not even planning to add them) and subselects are really not that exotic although they can be costly to execute. Furthermore, MySQL does not support views, triggers (and probably neither table nor column constraints). The former three: stored procedures, views and triggers are the planned additions to version 5.

A bit of reality: Microsoft's SQL Server (based on Sybase) supports User Defined Functions as well as stored procedures (and in my view too many other features). Free (as in no cost versions) of both Sybase and Oracle Linux Developers versions are available. Just check out the features in Sybase's Transact-SQL (the cleaner, more refined of these two) and Oracle's PL/SQL and you will see very useful coding features for building robust stored procedures. Their performance should be acceptable for both too.

My expertise is more on the Sybase side with a bit thrown in for SQL Server due to their using the same coding language base. If you are interested in a free (as in freedom) database product I would suggest your investigating PostgreSQL that has been moving more deliberately towards a full RDBMS. Moreover, this latter group seems to have been making more progress while emitting less grandiose statements.

My point essentially is simply: MySQL has a valid role, but nothing like what is claimed in this article. If you doubt this just investigate the available (free and demo) versions of several commercial databases to see how lacking MySQL is in comparison. I guess this is a case of marketing that is running ahead of reality.
nicsmr

Oct 26, 2004
5:31 PM EDT
I'm sorry to say that I must agree. Stored procedures and triggers are an absolute must in any commercial grade production RDBMS. MySQL may be good for web based data bases, but for real world development Oracle stands first followed by the rest in, catch up mode. Sure its expensive but when your livelyhood depends on it,the expense may be justified. It a shame the licencing is such a ripoff. I compare MySQL more to the old Dbase or Paradox software. good for small home DB apps as recipe books and album/cd databases.

Sure Oracle and Mysql are in a race, but not in the same stadium.

nicsmr

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