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Comment by gaius | Hacker News Reader

I just wish that that knowledge was embedded in the products themselves

Err, it is. Oracle, Sybase, MS SQL, Informix, all the major database products have sophisticated query optimizers. You use SQL to describe the result set you want, and it figures out the best way to get it.

Sadly the Web 2.0 world is full of people who actually believe MySQL is as good as databases get, having never used anything else. It's probably a good 10-15 years behind the state-of-the-art, at least (and Oracle et al are behind in niche areas).

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I hear the points about query optimizers that you and the other repliers have made. (And they are valid points, all. I was just misinformed about MySQL.) I was more addressing the points made about database design decisions w/respect to data type choice and their effect on storage requirements and speed. I was wondering, specifically, if it is technically feasible to allow designers to specify 'text' or 'string' at design time, enter in some typical data, and have the engine choose the optimum type subject to its implementation constraints.

That said, it seems like I need to educate myself on the various products, though any prototypes I build will still use MySQL just because of the price point. :o)

Check out PostgreSQL, Firebird and SAP/DB. I can't think of a single technical or commercial reason to use MySQL.

Correction. There is one reason. Its a lot easier to find MySQL devs. than postgres, firebird, or SAP/DB devs even though the latter are a far superior product technically.

To give an example on varchars. Postgres never uses more space for varchars than strictly necessary. In fact, it is common to use text columns which are varchars extended to 2 gigabytes. Furthermore, postgres is capable of automatically compressing and decompressing data on the fly, no interaction required.

It also has specialized data types for pretty much any task you can imagine and a very robust extension system in case you need to roll your own types.

Agreed. A single look at a performance chart for MySQL under simultaneous transaction load shows it crumbling under. Furthermore, it has had substandard ACID support and substandard ANSI SQL support for generations and these problems are just starting to get fixed. Using MySQL as an indicator for the rest of the industry is deeply misguided.

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