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Story: MySQL and Firebird battle for database top spot

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id they do this survey on the firebird site? In my experience most people havn't even heard about Firebird.

MySQL AB is much better at marketing than producing a good database. Both Firebird and even more so Postgresql are far better products than MySQL. MySQL AB tells you that MySQL 5 is the fastest database around and that it now have all the features that real databses have, such as triggers, stored procedures, transactions...

The problem is that they don't tell you that you have to turn off all the nice features that postgresql have to get the speed. Even if you turn it all off Postgresql still beats them on speed as soon as the queries get slightly more complicated than "select * from table" or you have many simultaneous users. To make things even worse the lack of features in the MySQL SQL language often makes the queries more complex and inelegant. Just imagine doing a relaional division without the "except" keyword.

The lack of feature in the MySQL language also makes it much harder to port code written for other databases.

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