PostgreSQL does NOT have the capacity to scale enormously and to scale at all is...

jacques_chester · on March 25, 2013

It's true that MySQL is ahead on the tickbox features here.

But the PostgreSQL team are doing their usual slow, stepwise refinement approach to implementing these features from the primitives and moving up. I expect that in a few versions they'll be at sufficient feature parity with MySQL on this front that anyone who cares enough is the sort of person who decides between Oracle RAC and Teradata.

While that will be good and I look forward to it, I will miss seeing you turn up in these threads like a bad penny.

taligent · on March 25, 2013

And I will definitely miss the weekly "PostgreSQL is all you need and you're stupid to use anything else" threads.

My position is that there a lot of different products out there that cater for different needs and there is no "one size fits all" solution. I can scale Cassandra out to a hundred nodes in minutes on EC2 with no configuration changes. I also have queries in MongoDB that are literally 50x faster than on a SQL database.

jacques_chester · on March 25, 2013

> And I will definitely miss the weekly "PostgreSQL is all you need and you're stupid to use anything else" threads.

I think that for any case where you might be building a new system based on a relational backend, it's basically true (modulo local constraints like "we're an Oracle shop"). The chances that you will need to run a website that needs 100 Cassandra servers any time soon is ... well it's unlikely.

PostgreSQL is a stable, proven workhorse. That's why I like it. My point of view is that you should start with high safety and features and relax those constraints as circumstances demand.

neya · on March 25, 2013

Jacques, Taligent is a well known troll here - Two things you never talk against when Taligent is around - Apple and MongoDB. And he will start poisoning the threads. Just ignore him.

taligent · on March 25, 2013

Very mature neya. Feel free to actually address my points on their merits without resorting to ad hominem attacks. That way everyone wins.

And I comment on lots of different things but have a stronger interests in Apple and Database. So sue me I guess.

ibotty · on March 25, 2013

please show these 50x faster queries. really. i am curious.

neya · on March 25, 2013

Exactly, my thoughts!

insaneirish · on March 25, 2013

I'd love to know how many nodes you'd need on a virtual server that doesn't have horrid I/O performance like EC2.

ldng · on March 25, 2013

"In the beginning of Spotify, when load was lower, PostgreSQL was definitely the right tool for the job."

"Later came Postgres 9 and with it the excellent streaming replication and hot standby functionality. One of the most important database clusters at Spotify, the cluster that stores user credentials (for login), is a Postgres 9 cluster."

Hum, your link kind of defeat your point. That or I did not understand the point you were trying to make.