Ask HN: It's 2023, how do you choose between MySQL and Postgres?

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  • TimescaleDB

    An open-source time-series SQL database optimized for fast ingest and complex queries. Packaged as a PostgreSQL extension.

  • Friends don't let their friends choose Mysql :)

    A super long time ago (decades) when I was using Oracle regularly I had to make a decision on which way to go. Although Mysql then had the mindshare I thought that Postgres was more similar to Oracle, more standards compliant, and more of a real enterprise type of DB. The rumor was also that Postgres was heavier than MySQL. Too many horror stories of lost data (MyIsam), bad transactions (MyIsam lacks transaction integrity), and the number of Mysql gotchas being a really long list influenced me.

    In time I actually found out that I had underestimated one of the most important attributes of Postgres that was a huge strength over Mysql: the power of community. Because Postgres has a really superb community that can be found on Libera Chat and elsewhere, and they are very willing to help out, I think Postgres has a huge advantage over Mysql. RhodiumToad [Andrew Gierth] https://github.com/RhodiumToad & davidfetter [David Fetter] https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidfetter are incredibly helpful folks.

    I don't know that Postgres' licensing made a huge difference or not but my perception is that there are a ton of 3rd party products based on Postgres but customized to specific DB needs because of the more liberalness of the PG license which is MIT/BSD derived https://www.postgresql.org/about/licence/

    Some of the PG based 3rd party DBs:

    Enterprise DB https://www.enterprisedb.com/ - general purpose PG with some variants

    Greenplum https://greenplum.org/ - Data warehousing

    Crunchydata https://www.crunchydata.com/products/hardened-postgres - high security Postgres for regulated environments

    Citus https://www.citusdata.com - Distributed DB & Columnar

    Timescale https://www.timescale.com/

    Why Choose PG today?

    If you want better ACID: Postgres

    If you want more compliant SQL: Postgres

    If you want more customizability to a variety of use-cases: Postgres using a variant

    If you want the flexibility of using NOSQL at times: Postgres

    If you want more product knowledge reusability for other backend products: Postgres

  • citus

    Distributed PostgreSQL as an extension

  • Friends don't let their friends choose Mysql :)

    A super long time ago (decades) when I was using Oracle regularly I had to make a decision on which way to go. Although Mysql then had the mindshare I thought that Postgres was more similar to Oracle, more standards compliant, and more of a real enterprise type of DB. The rumor was also that Postgres was heavier than MySQL. Too many horror stories of lost data (MyIsam), bad transactions (MyIsam lacks transaction integrity), and the number of Mysql gotchas being a really long list influenced me.

    In time I actually found out that I had underestimated one of the most important attributes of Postgres that was a huge strength over Mysql: the power of community. Because Postgres has a really superb community that can be found on Libera Chat and elsewhere, and they are very willing to help out, I think Postgres has a huge advantage over Mysql. RhodiumToad [Andrew Gierth] https://github.com/RhodiumToad & davidfetter [David Fetter] https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidfetter are incredibly helpful folks.

    I don't know that Postgres' licensing made a huge difference or not but my perception is that there are a ton of 3rd party products based on Postgres but customized to specific DB needs because of the more liberalness of the PG license which is MIT/BSD derived https://www.postgresql.org/about/licence/

    Some of the PG based 3rd party DBs:

    Enterprise DB https://www.enterprisedb.com/ - general purpose PG with some variants

    Greenplum https://greenplum.org/ - Data warehousing

    Crunchydata https://www.crunchydata.com/products/hardened-postgres - high security Postgres for regulated environments

    Citus https://www.citusdata.com - Distributed DB & Columnar

    Timescale https://www.timescale.com/

    Why Choose PG today?

    If you want better ACID: Postgres

    If you want more compliant SQL: Postgres

    If you want more customizability to a variety of use-cases: Postgres using a variant

    If you want the flexibility of using NOSQL at times: Postgres

    If you want more product knowledge reusability for other backend products: Postgres

  • InfluxDB

    Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

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  • Greenplum

    Greenplum Database - Massively Parallel PostgreSQL for Analytics. An open-source massively parallel data platform for analytics, machine learning and AI.

  • Friends don't let their friends choose Mysql :)

    A super long time ago (decades) when I was using Oracle regularly I had to make a decision on which way to go. Although Mysql then had the mindshare I thought that Postgres was more similar to Oracle, more standards compliant, and more of a real enterprise type of DB. The rumor was also that Postgres was heavier than MySQL. Too many horror stories of lost data (MyIsam), bad transactions (MyIsam lacks transaction integrity), and the number of Mysql gotchas being a really long list influenced me.

    In time I actually found out that I had underestimated one of the most important attributes of Postgres that was a huge strength over Mysql: the power of community. Because Postgres has a really superb community that can be found on Libera Chat and elsewhere, and they are very willing to help out, I think Postgres has a huge advantage over Mysql. RhodiumToad [Andrew Gierth] https://github.com/RhodiumToad & davidfetter [David Fetter] https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidfetter are incredibly helpful folks.

    I don't know that Postgres' licensing made a huge difference or not but my perception is that there are a ton of 3rd party products based on Postgres but customized to specific DB needs because of the more liberalness of the PG license which is MIT/BSD derived https://www.postgresql.org/about/licence/

    Some of the PG based 3rd party DBs:

    Enterprise DB https://www.enterprisedb.com/ - general purpose PG with some variants

    Greenplum https://greenplum.org/ - Data warehousing

    Crunchydata https://www.crunchydata.com/products/hardened-postgres - high security Postgres for regulated environments

    Citus https://www.citusdata.com - Distributed DB & Columnar

    Timescale https://www.timescale.com/

    Why Choose PG today?

    If you want better ACID: Postgres

    If you want more compliant SQL: Postgres

    If you want more customizability to a variety of use-cases: Postgres using a variant

    If you want the flexibility of using NOSQL at times: Postgres

    If you want more product knowledge reusability for other backend products: Postgres

  • neon

    Neon: Serverless Postgres. We separated storage and compute to offer autoscaling, branching, and bottomless storage.

  • rqlite

    The lightweight, distributed relational database built on SQLite.

  • Just to point out, there are now SQLite replication and various "distributed database" projects which seem to work fairly well.

    They're probably not as battle tested as the PostgreSQL ones, but they are around, have users, and are actively developed.

    The ones I remember off the top of my head:

    * https://litestream.io

    * https://github.com/rqlite/rqlite <-- more of a "distributed database using RAFT" type of thing

    * https://github.com/canonical/dqlite

  • litestream

    Streaming replication for SQLite.

  • Just to point out, there are now SQLite replication and various "distributed database" projects which seem to work fairly well.

    They're probably not as battle tested as the PostgreSQL ones, but they are around, have users, and are actively developed.

    The ones I remember off the top of my head:

    * https://litestream.io

    * https://github.com/rqlite/rqlite <-- more of a "distributed database using RAFT" type of thing

    * https://github.com/canonical/dqlite

  • pgddl

    DDL eXtractor functions for PostgreSQL (ddlx)

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NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

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