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Comment by patrickg-zill | Hacker News Reader

Step 1. Install PostgreSQL .

Both MySQL and PostgreSQL are absolutely fantastic pieces of software. Both have their pros and cons, but in general, they are neck in neck.

There was a nice quote that I forget where I read it, but it goes as such:

"Choose MySQL if you want an open source product, PostgreSQL if you want an open source project."

Actually no. PostgreSQL and MySQL are certainly not neck to neck especially in performance. See http://tweakers.net/reviews/657

Summary: MySQL comes close to beating PostgreSQL (in speed) when there is little contention but gets absolutely clobbered when there are multiple users simultaneously.

My addition: Even with 5.1, MySQL is still severely lacking when it comes to ANSI features as compared to PostgreSQL and other commercial solutions like Oracle and DB2.

Does PostgreSQL do production-ready replication?

Not to defend the original comment, but yes PostgreSQL does have production quality replication through Slony-I. In fact, that's what is powering reddit right now.

Again, I don't want to defend the original comment because it was just a flame and I think the database-fights are just as stupid as the language-fights.

I wasn't trying to feed the flames of an argument, I was genuinely curious. In my day-job, I administer MySQL databases, and only vaguely handle anything with PostgreSQL. Replication was an issue when we went down the MySQL path, and I haven't kept abreast of PostgreSQL's development.

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