Re: "Perl is the duct tape of the Internet" and other musings

Robert S. Thau (rst@ai.mit.edu)
Thu, 9 Jul 1998 20:38:20 -0400 (EDT)


Gordon Irlam writes:
> [PostgreSQL] has lots of cool sophisticated stuff, but if you attempt to
> use it seriously, you discover it isn't sufficiently reliable
> and rounded out for production use, instead it appears the result
> of a whole bunch of graduate students hacking on it in different
> random ways to get PhDs. Nodays though some real programmers have
> picked it up, and are turning it into something useful.

... adding a whole lot of missing SQL features in the process, and
actually removing some of the kool research ideas which haven't seen
all that much practical use (e.g., time travel). But, even the latest
releases do have a reputation for being slow and a bit flaky.

> mySQL? I assume this is a new name for mSQL.

It isn't. While it can be used as a drop-in replacement for mSQL, it
is faster, much more complete in its support of SQL features (the main
omissions, as mentioned, being transactions and stored procedures),
and has a significantly more liberal license (though still not DFSG
free).

rst