>MySQL is fantastic for probably 90% of what you'd ever think to use it for
No, it is tolerable if you don't know any better. That's like saying a gremlin is fantastic for 90% of what you'd ever think to use it for. If you have a choice, and know other cars exist, then you wouldn't think to use it for anything. If you don't know other cars exist, then you can hardly be believed for claiming it is "fantastic". Mysql is a nightmare. It is incredibly crippled, full of limitations that force you to add complexity to your code to work around them, and offers nothing positive to make up for these downsides.
>but both will get you a very long ways before they are ever your main problem as a startup.
Haha, tell that to our SQL server guy who got stuck doing a PHP/mysql project. He didn't get through the first day without coming to me asking "how do you linux people function when your database can't do anything?". He ran into three separate mysql limitations in the first day he was using it.
Although most of my experience is with MySQL, and to a lesser extent Postgres, I spend two years supporting enterprise applications that had either an Oracle or a SQL Server (either 2008R2 or 2012) backend.
I can confirm that in comparison, SQL Server is a developer's dream. My understanding is that the earlier versions of SQL Server kind of sucked, but the new ones are fantastic. The sibling post's point is valid for 2008R2 and earlier - you had to use a ROW_NUMBER() subquery - but that was one of the very few niggles.
I wasn't a fan of Oracle in general - it's comparatively a nightmare to setup and maintain, and in my opinion the SQL syntax is uglier. But from a dev/support standpoint, Oracle's flashback queries is what impressed me - in Oracle you can write something like SELECT * FROM table AS OF TIMESTAMP. So, say, if you accidentally deleted a couple rows and committed the transaction, you could restore them using a flashback query. My impression was that Oracle was more scalable and supported more enterprisey features, but that's not really my area of expertise.
Honestly, if SQL Server wasn't wildly expensive for any real work, it would be my number one choice and my number one recommendation. Guess you can't have everything. And Oracle, of course, is even more expensive. So Postgres it is!
...well, except on my Dreamhost sites, because MySQL is what they have.
Nah, I took it as an opportunity to educate him. He learned that I am not a linux guy, and that there's actually lots of unix operating systems. And then he learned that mysql isn't the linux database, it is just a database and that he should use postgresql instead.
No, it is tolerable if you don't know any better. That's like saying a gremlin is fantastic for 90% of what you'd ever think to use it for. If you have a choice, and know other cars exist, then you wouldn't think to use it for anything. If you don't know other cars exist, then you can hardly be believed for claiming it is "fantastic". Mysql is a nightmare. It is incredibly crippled, full of limitations that force you to add complexity to your code to work around them, and offers nothing positive to make up for these downsides.
>but both will get you a very long ways before they are ever your main problem as a startup.
Haha, tell that to our SQL server guy who got stuck doing a PHP/mysql project. He didn't get through the first day without coming to me asking "how do you linux people function when your database can't do anything?". He ran into three separate mysql limitations in the first day he was using it.