Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to SafariMySQL vs PostgreSQL
When comparing MySQL vs PostgreSQL, the Slant community recommends PostgreSQL for most people. In the question“What are the best databases to use for Node.js applications?” PostgreSQL is ranked 1st while MySQL is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose PostgreSQL is:
PostgreSQL performance increases with each release, this is also proven by many benchmark tests. Notable performance features include: * As PostgreSQL only supports one storage engine, it has been able to integrate and optimise it and with the rest of the database. This has resulted in multiple benefits such as the ability to allow different transaction types to co-exist efficiently without the need to select storage engine types once for each table ahead of time. * On the fly data compression resulting in less IO required for reading. * Asynchronous + synchronous Replication. * PostgreSQL supports a asynchronous API for use by client applications. It is reported to increase performance by up to 40% and is not supported by MySQL. * Designed to scale very well with large numbers of cores at high concurrency levels.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Scalable
MySQL is made to handle a lot of data and to be used in large applications. This makes it extremely scalable and fast, even under a lot of workload.
Pro Multiple third-party tools that help working with MySQL
Since MySQL is one of the most popular relational databases, maybe the most popular, there exist many third-party tools and applications that help developers to use MySQL in their development.
Pro Easy to start working with
Because of it's popularity there are a lot of tutorials and guides out there that help developers install and work with MySQL. The installation process itself is not very hard and there are multiple powerful GUI tools that make it extremely easy to work with MySQL for a beginner.
Pro High performance
PostgreSQL performance increases with each release, this is also proven by many benchmark tests.
Notable performance features include:
As PostgreSQL only supports one storage engine, it has been able to integrate and optimise it and with the rest of the database. This has resulted in multiple benefits such as the ability to allow different transaction types to co-exist efficiently without the need to select storage engine types once for each table ahead of time.
On the fly data compression resulting in less IO required for reading.
Asynchronous + synchronous Replication.
PostgreSQL supports a asynchronous API for use by client applications. It is reported to increase performance by up to 40% and is not supported by MySQL.
Designed to scale very well with large numbers of cores at high concurrency levels.
Pro Fully ACID compliant
PostgreSQL is known to have a very holistic approach to robustness and data integrity which is reflected by it being fully ACID compliant.
PostgreSQL has always been strict about making sure data is valid before allowing it into the database, and there is no way for a client to bypass those checks.
Depending on your requirements, ACID compliance might be important.
Pro Strong community
PostgreSQL has a strong community backing it, with guides, tutorials and support for any kind of problem a developer may have.
Pro Support for JSON data type
JSON data can be stored as a column with optional indexes. In 9.4 (upcoming at the time of this writing), JSONB will be a binary version of JSON that will save space. It's like the best of the NO-SQL world without having to give up ACID and Relationships. This means that cascading deletes can be done in a single Transaction across multiple JSON documents.
Pro Actively developed
Regular fixes and features are released
Pro Support for geographic objects
PostgreSQL can be extended to have geographic object support through PostGIS and allows for location queries to be run through SQL.
Pro Multiple node packages available
There are many packages (like Sequelize) that integrate deeply with the features Postgres offers.
Pro Support Perl and Python for coding stored procedures
Postgres supports popular languages for coding stored procedures, such as Perl and Python. So, you can fairly easy transform just DB-server to reliable Service with complex business logic.
Pro Open Source, powerful and on par with other paid RDBMS'
It is a powerful, open source product that has all the bells and whistles when compared with its costly, proprietary counterparts.
Cons
Con Error messages usually are not very detailed
When you are trying to do something in MySQL and something goes wrong it will simply give you an error message with an error code. Which does not say much about what went wrong unless you look it up online. This can be a little cumbersome during development.
Con Not suited for small apps
Because of it's complexity and power, it may be an overkill to use PostgreSQL in small applications that will not make use of it's full power.
