On 1/30/06, Uno Engborg <uno@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> Could someone please recommend a nice and well documented database > >> program for a person who has never used a database? > > > > That's not much to go on when asking for a recommendation. > > The obvious choices on fedora will be MySQL and postgresql > > and between those, postgresql follows the sql standards > > more closely and has a less restrictive license. Mysql > > might be slightly faster if your usage is mostly read-only. > > > MySQL being faster is than postgresql is mostly a myth. It may be true > if you have very simple queries or very few connected users. In general > Postgresql is significantly faster. > > The MySQL is faster myth, goes back to the MySQL 3 days when that > actually was the case, > mostly because MySQL back then didn't support transactions, or > referential integrety > checks while Postgresql did. (MySQL still doesn't fully support > referential integrety). > > As an example, I created a table containg absolute paths to filenames in my > filesystem, the file size and the md5 sum of the file. I then made a query > to group the files by the md5 sum, and ordering these groups by file size. > On my filesystem that took 12 minutes in postgresql 8.1, and over 16 hours > using mysql 5. > > To make it worse, MySQL doesn't have the richness in SQL that postgresql > offers. This often makes queries to MySQL more clumsy. E.g. try do a > relational > division without using "exept". > > Another factor in the choice between MySQL or Postgresql is the fact > that Oracle have bought the innodb > storage engine that is the main the one you need to use if you want to > come even close to the feature set of > postgresql does. In my mind, this creates some uncertainty for the > future. It gives a competitor the means > to shut down commersial licensing or raise the prices. That can never be > good. > > If I was to chose between Postgresql and another free database it would > be between Postgresql and Firebird, > where I would go for firebird for embedded solutions or when I needed to > have databases that resided in > just one file. Just like Postgresq, Firebird is very close to the sql > standard, but it is not as feature rich as Postgresql Thanks, Uno, for your very detailed explanation. As desktop databases for Linux, I guess one can only find OpenOffice Base and Kexi, is not it? Paul
