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Comment by bawolff | Hacker News Reader

People always talk about nosql scaling better, but some of the largest websites on the internet are mysql based. I'm sure some people have problems where nosql is genuinely an appropriate solution, but i find it hard to believe that most people get anywhere near that level of scalability.

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Exactly, and from a features standpoint Postgres can do everything Dynamo can do and so much more. I think a lot of software devs don't really know SQL or how RDBMS work so they don't know what they are giving up.

This is similar to how I feel about graph databases. Twitter (FlockDB) and Facebook (TAO) built scalable graph abstractions over SQL without a hitch.

Why would I want to use a graph DB directly then?

Postgres even has JSONB support, so if you really want to store whole documents NOSQL-style, you can - and you can still use all the usual RDBMS goodness alongside it!

Postgres really is a wonderful database.

Those very large mysql deployments typically use it as a nosql system, with a sharded database spread over dozens or hundreds of instances, and referential integrity maintained by the business layer, not by the database.

For a good example of a high volume site using a proper rdbms approach I would look at stackoverflow. It can (and has) run on a single ms sql server instance.

Even if that's so, still suggests rdbms are a good choice.

I do know for Wikipedia, english wikipedia is mostly a single master mysql db + slaves, with most of the sharding being on the site language level (article text contents stored elsewhere)

POC scales easier, thats all that matters to win the idiot match.

hey.com is the latest one that is on mysql.

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