Alieniloquent

So I’m working on a website for Erica. She wants some custom coding done and some database goodness, so naturally she asked me to do it.

Being The Ruby Guy, I decided to do it in Rails. I also decided to use MySQL, as it is what I know. Well, I ran into some snags, and I still don’t know what was causing them. Suffice it to say, MySQL was just not working. So, I decided to give PostgreSQL a try.

Now, I’ve always know that PostgreSQL had more features than MySQL. I’ve heard that it’s generally better than MySQL. Yet, I’ve always been afraid to try it. It has been a completely irrational fear, of course, but fear nonetheless. Well, since I found myself needing a different database, I bit the bullet.

It was about damn time. Building PostgreSQL from source was a breeze. I’ve built MySQL from source, and it’s a pain in the ass. Setting up my database was also a breeze. It is also a pain in the ass for MySQL. So PostgreSQL has two counts of not being a a pain in the ass, and MySQL has none.

Then it comes time to think about database users. I’ve always thought it was a little silly that MySQL conflates granting privileges to users with creating users. PostgreSQL doesn’t do that. You create users and then you assign them privileges, as it should be.

The command line shell for PostgreSQL also is easier to explore and learn than the one for MySQL. The built-in help is nice, and the online manual is much easier to read.

So, all told, I have a new favorite database.