[svlug] Database flame fest;-)

[David N. Welton]

Brian J. Tarricone wrote:
> On 12/15/2005 11:33 AM, David N. Welton wrote:
> 
>>>de Runtz, Lars wrote:
>>> 
>>>
>>>>And another example, an open source online shopping cart at http://www.zen-cart.com/
>>>
>>>In my previous example of not using Mysql < 5 where a database is
>>>needed, this is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about.  It's
>>>scary to entrust people's money to that kind of system.
> 
> 
> Could you provide some reasoning for this anti-recommendation?  I'm
> rather curious as to why MySQL < 5 is unsuitable for "serious" applications.

Because I don't really trust it.  Stuff like this happens:

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/02/22/power_outage_knocks_wikipedia_offline.html

I guess I should, however, qualify 'serious'.  I mean systems that make
heavy use of a database as a database, rather than just a fancy,
persistent hash table...

> In another email, you mention MySQL missing some features.  I'm passably
> familiar with some of these missing features, but I don't think that's a
> great reason for declaring that it's "scary" to entrust financial
> transactions to MySQL < 5.

Ok, there's a little bit of hyperbole there, but people *should* get a
little scared, because they might think about what they're doing more.
It's the oblivious folks that are handing off their data to stock (non
InnoDB) Mysql 4 systems, and not really considering things like
transactions and concurrency.

> On a side note, Google AdWords ran off MySQL for quite some time[1],
> then was switched to "a commercial database".  The performance of the
> new DB turned out to be sub-par, and they switched back to MySQL.  Given
> the timeframe, they were definitely using MySQL < 5 (and were dealing
> with money-related stuff), and they seem to have done all right.

Well, they're certainly not going to stand up and tell you about any
screwups are they?  Maybe they got lucky.  It's not as if Mysql is a
pile of garbage that falls down everytime someone sneezes - some people
may never have problems, but I think they're gambling.  Google is
probably the kind of outfit that has the money and resources to get the
most out of something like Mysql too, rather than a lot of the people
I've seen using it.

-- 
David N. Welton
- http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/

Linux, Open Source Consulting
- http://www.dedasys.com/