“Traditionally, the comparison between PostgreSQL and MySQL gets
heated from both sides of the religious camps. They are both
technically strong, open-source databases with a large install
base. However, in reality, rarely do the strengths of each database
overlap to an extent where it is a toss-up of which solution to
use.“Once people understand the strengths of each product, the
choice is typically fairly clear. In order to properly evaluate the
strengths of PostgreSQL and MySQL, let’s look at the history and
pedigree of each. Let’s also look at their feature functionality
and performance, as well as the requirements for a successful
enterprise database deployment.‘A historical perspective
“The PostgreSQL community is the oldest, largest and
fastest-growing community of its kind. PostgreSQL started in 1985
at the University of California, Berkley as an evolution of the
Ingres project. After several years in academia, the PostgreSQL
project was released into the open-source world. The community
began to flourish to the point where, today, there are more than
1,000 contributors and over 30,000 members.“The key advantage to the large community is the interaction
between users and developers, which allows users to become directly
involved in the design of new features. This diverse community is
the model that many other open-source communities strive for.”