OK, Fataqui, I'll bite:
Yes, I agree that this should have been posted in General Database Discussion. Moderators, please move this thread there if possible.
But, I don't see how anyone who spends any time building real applications could consider MySQL as even comparing to PostgreSQL, much less Oracle, or even the lowly MSSQL server. Yes, that noisy PC Magazine article was a bunch of hooey! Of course MySQL is blazing fast. That's because it hardly even brushes the surface of providing useful data constraints, much less attempting to be a true relational database. And I only grudginly say this because they are finally actually trying to add these things. On the MySQL website, they used to say such things as
Reasons NOT to Use Foreign Keys constraints: There are so many problems with foreign key constraints that we don't know where to start:
- Foreign key constraints make life very complicated, because the foreign key definitions must be stored in a database and implementing them would destroy the whole "nice approach" of using files that can be moved, copied, and removed.
- etc... (many other inconsistent statements, but need I say more?)
So far, the only reasons I see you presenting MySQL as a great database are 1. speed, and 2. it's a "24/7" database. Huh? I suppose PostgreSQL only works 23 hours of the day, 6 days a week. Yes, there was a time when you would have to take PostgreSQL offline for a few seconds to run a VACUUM on the tables. That time has been gone for awhile. And honestly, even if not, I would gladly pay the cost of having that downtime, in exchange for having real referential integrity, views, triggers, rules, CHECK constraints, stored procedures, user-defined datatypes, etc... (it's going to take MySQL *awhile* to catch up to the things PostgreSQL has had for years)
See http://www.pgro.uk7.net/innodb1.htm for an interesting discussion. And here's my FAQ (http://www.tek-tips.com/gfaq.cfm/lev2/4/lev3/27/spid/699/#1751) from another forum on how to really compare PostgreSQL to MySQL. No, MySQL is not evil, and it has it's good points. But it has its place, and that is not (yet) among the serious RDBMS systems.
And speaking of PHP's relationship to all this, just browse http://php.net/pgsql and you will see some amazing new functions being developed for PHP/PostgrSQL. The future looks good! I have developed real PHP business applications with both MySQL and PostgreSQL, and I am never going back to the former ;).