General discussion

Rick Morris | 1 Dec 2003 02:59

Re: PostgreSQL Advocacy, Thoughts and Comments

Tony wrote:

> HI All,
>
> I'm glad that this thread prompted some thoughtful response.   I think 
> one of my main points I was trying to make, Jason hit the nail on the 
> head.  The article to which I was referring uses a great example which 
> I have experienced many times before, but in order to grasp this, PHP 
> et al, must be thought of as a scripting language which crosses many 
> corporate boundries, and it is easy to assume that it's primary use 
> (simple web site back ends) are the only thing to discuss.  But the 
> situation has changed enourmously since the release of PHP v4.  Now 
> many consultant/developer/sys-admins like myself are going to client 
> site on a contract (this is especially true in the UK, I can't speak 
> for anywhere else) and finding complex stocktrading systems, inventory 
> systems, CRM systems, and others, all written in PHP backed by MySQL.  

So true! I am in the U.S (Florida), and I am seeing the same thing here. 
Starting around 2000, many fairly complex, mission-critical PHP/MySQL 
apps were developed, which are just beginning to surface. We all know 
how prevalent PHP and MySQL became overnight, but how many of us realize 
that it was not just used for 'lightweight' applications?. Imagine how 
big a problem all these PHP/MySQL applications are going to become over 
the next few years. I have had the dubious pleasure of moving a few of 
these from MySQL to PostgreSQL already (Yes, financial systems using 
MySQL's unconstrained numeric types!!), and I shudder to think about all 
the companies that might end up with *years* of poorly-constrained data.

> Whether this is right or wrong, good choice or bad choice is not what 
> I'm interested in debating.   The point is that when these systems

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Brendan Jurd | 1 Dec 2003 06:22

Re: PostgreSQL Advocacy, Thoughts and Comments

Hello,

I'd just like to add that this thread is perfectly aligned with my own 
experiences on the DB front.

When I started out as a developer, I was familiar with the concepts of 
good database design, but *not* with the range of DBMSs available, and 
their respective advantages and disadvantages.  I started using MySQL 
because it was popular, fast, free and (sort of) easy to set up.  Then 
my major project, a payroll management system, previously PHP/MSSQL, 
needed a new environment established very quickly.  I used MySQL because 
time was short and it was what I knew.  To get around the lack of proper 
foreign key constraints I did crazy things like manually maintaining a 
table of "foreign keys" and enforcing them from PHP.

When the client on that project hired a new sysadmin, the sa took one 
look at the system and said "Uhh, dude.  Do you know anything about 
postgres?"

I'd heard of postgres but didn't really know anything about it.  After 
having the sysadmin tell me about postgres' capabilities, and checking 
out the manual for myself, I realised that I'd been barking up the wrong 
proverbial tree for months.  So we migrated the system to postgres 
earlier this year, and I couldn't be more pleased with it.  The 
immediate payoff of having referential integrity enforced properly was 
wonderful, but the advantages just kept on coming.  I started using 
postgres functions and views to shift more of the work of "organising 
data" over to the piece of software that *should* be handling it.  Some 
of those views enabled me to chop vast tracts of superfluous PHP code 
out of the system.  The more I used postgres, the more I came to

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