mysql vs. postgres

Anon

i ve been using mysql for quite some time
in connection with php and i am (rather)
happy with it. now i am standing before
a really big project and i want to know,
if it is advisable to migrate to postgres.
the only thing i disliked with mysql
were the missing triggers (like "on delete" and that stuff). advantage for data-backup is the file-based data-storing. i wrote some higher level class which handles connections
and does automatic reconnections during connection-loss while traffic is high.

i am searching for someone who has experience with postgres and high traffic and can tell me some details about the
usability of postgres. i really know nothing
about postgres.

thanx in advance
alex

kparker

You will be very happy with the move to postgres. High volumes, including high volumes of inserts and updates, are no problem. And you get triggers, rules, views, subselects, foreign keys, genuine transactions ( hmm, did I leave anything out?) and they have at long last finally gotten rid of the 8k row size limit.

kparker

BTW, you asked via email about backups. I almost never respond to "offline" questions from this forum, because it's much better to keep everything here--that way everyone benefits from the questions/answers. But in this case, since the question is short and sweet:

do you know how "easy" it is to generate backups
of the actual tables?

It's completely easy (no quotes needed, either.) You just run the pg_dump utility and you get a dump of all the data written out to a file that can be used to completely restore the database--i.e. unless you specifically ask it not to, it includes the entire database schema as part of the backup. Best of all, since it's protected by a transaction, (a) the entire backup is self-consistent, and (b) other users can keep accessing and even updating the database at the same time.