[ale] So many choices....

[Scott Perkins]

Hi Chris- 1st I hope you saw my note recently about starting
a Metro Atlanta PHP/MYSQL user group.  As an obviously interested
candidate I hope you can join us.  It is for those like you we crank this up.  

re: topic question-
I would think these would be the primary distinguishing issues
since in many way s they are similar.

1.reliability
2.ease of use  documentation/flexibility/intuitiveness etc
3.requisite functions
4.compatability with/supported by host? if not your own machine   installation
issues etc. 
4.performance probably not an issue

I have been following PHP maillist for severral weeks
1.  I have never heard anything bad particularly about either as far as
    reliability.
2.  Also no comments about preferences as to ease of use.
3.  There have been many comments about PostgresQL possessing functions
    not contained in Mysql at the expense of some performance. Such
    as MYSQL does not support Transactions and rollback/ Sub-selects/
    Unions and maybe others as does PostgreSQL.
    ( the subselects and unions has especially been interesting to me
     in terms of determining whether I might like to use these features
     easily. )
4.  Mysql to quote an experienced authority is pretty damn fast.
    PostgreSQL as damn fast.  Performance is probably not an issue


I would like to follow your thinking on this as I will be making the same
decision.  So lets stay in touch.   I will say, however, that
the php development team  seems to have a very close working relationship with
MysQL and probably many more installations of PHP
Mysql than PostgreSQL.  Judgeing only from volume of discussions at
php maillist.   Conceivably, at the sacrifice of complexity or unctionality the
MYsql might be "simpler" or easier.  That is what
I would like to verify.







Chris Ricker wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm starting to amass a large amount of data, and I'd like to create a db to
> hold it since my current solution of papers stuffed in lab notebooks doesn't
> really scale ;-).  The size probably won't get that insane--maybe 900 rows,
> 600 columns, each cell ~500 chars for the main table.
> 
> The relationships between my data points aren't that complex, so I don't
> need ACEDB or anything like that.  I'm mainly just planning on storing the
> data, obviously, and then doing the usual PHP -> web with some of it, so I
> was thinking either MySQL or PostgresQL.  Anyone want to comment on the
> relative merits of those two (ie, why I would choose one over the other)?
> Any other suggestions?
> 
> thanks,
> chris
> 
> --
> Chris Ricker                                               kaboom at gatech.edu
>                                               chris.ricker at genetics.utah.edu