[Discuss] Rob Conery's critique of MySQL?

[Mark Woodward]

On 08/01/2012 08:36 PM, Richard Pieri wrote:
> Mark,
>
> In my opinion, the problem with MySQL is not that it locks tables.  
> It's that it has tables.
Oh no! Don't buy in to the No-SQL nonsense.

A table is nothing more than a naming convention of the technique of 
storing related data in the same logical unit of storage.
>
> There is no such thing as a good RDBMS.  They're all bad.  They all suck.
I disagree and I would LOVE to have a civil debate about this subject on 
this group.
> They're all designed around a data storage and retrieval philosophy 
> that was obsolete 30 years ago.
This is basically FUD, of course. You say it is obsolete, but you give 
no examples as to why. Electricity is far older and it is not obsolete.

> Tables are slow and they don't scale. 
Like I said, "table" is a naming convention. It is useful for expressing 
data relationships in a canonically understandable language, but a 
"table" doesn't really describe anything technically.

Why don't they scale?

A name/value pair is nothing more than a two entry row in a column in a 
table. Perhaps even the "key" is a virtual value within the index, but, 
none the less, one can express it as a table.
> There are faster, more robust, more flexible and more scalable ways of 
> storing and retrieving data than hyper-thyroidal spreadsheets.
Why? Why do you think that this is true? SQL is nothing more than a 
language and an algebra around data storage. The underlying storage is 
what scales. SQL is just a language for accessing it. The big "No-SQL" 
storage systems are all getting SQL front-ends because ad-hoc APIs are bad.

You say there are more robust, flexible, and scalable ways of storing 
data. Like what? How is it *not* a "table?"
>
> Which makes me wonder why you're such a strong advocate of PostgreSQL 
> over MySQL.  You wrote, "[i]f there are design deficiencies in a tool 
> and a better designed tool, at the same price, is available why would 
> you not choose the better designed tool?"  Why, in light of this, do 
> you bother with relational databases?  PostgreSQL may suck less than 
> MySQL but it still sucks.  Why are you not advocating a tool that 
> doesn't suck?
Well, like I said, lets have that debate. SQL is a language NOT a database.

MongoDB is webscale!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs

While I don't agree with MySQL POV, but the video is funny and sounds 
like your arguments.