The recent Streaming Replication patch committed to the PostgreSQL source tree is the potential killer feature that can catapult PostgreSQL into a prominent position in the cloud computing landscape. This combined with Hot Standby fills a major void in PostgreSQL by providing a replication solution native to the core engine and allows for a horizontally scalable solution without any bolt ons. This is a key piece of functionality to leverage the elasticity promise of compute clouds. While it has always been possible to use replication with PostgreSQL, integrating this into the core will allow new PostgreSQL users to easily use replication without feeling overwhelmed by learning Slonik scripts. What is most exciting about this is the timing of when this is all happening. With the uncertainty of the future of MySQL, there are more people than ever looking at PostgreSQL and one of the biggest historical knocks on PostgreSQL is the lack of an integrated replication solution. This is huge as this new audience starts to look at PostgreSQL and realize that PostgreSQL can more than fit their needs as an open source database instead of MySQL.
Streaming PostgreSQL into the CloudArchive for the ‘mysql’ Category
PostgreSQL: The Credible Alternative to MySQL
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 by Larry AlstonIn a recent blog post, Help Keep the Internet Free, Monty Widenius makes the argument that the free existence LAMP stack is threatened by the eventual acquisition of MySQL by Oracle in the Sun/Oracle deal. His reasoning stems from the position that there is no credible alternative for MySQL and Oracle will be an awful steward for the MySQL franchise.
There is much to debate about the many points Monty makes in this blog entry but one in particular deserves a mention here.
“Q: Why can’t everyone just switch to PostgreSQL?
PostgreSQL is a great database; I am friends with many of the PostgreSQL core developers.
The problems with PostgreSQL are:
- It’s not compatible with MySQL (different feature sets and different support by various applications) and it’s far from trivial (in many cases practically impossible) to convert MySQL applications to PostgreSQL and vice versa.
- It doesn’t have a single strong company backing that MySQL has to deliver high class support globally.
- The PostgreSQL market is also, as far as I know, dominated by EnterpriseDB that provides a closed source version of PostgreSQL, which is not good enough for companies standardizing on open source.
So for the Oracle/Sun/MySQL case, PostgreSQL is not an answer that would help approve the deal, the market share is too small.”
Needless to say we at EnterpriseDB could not disagree more with this point of view.
PostgreSQL: The Credible Alternative to MySQL
