From 218a211d04e5ed2e07c56c7e0b9c775518c17a40 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Josh Berkus
Q: What's the relationship between the PostgreSQL Project, EnterpriseDB, 2ndQuadrant, CommandPrompt, SRA, Greenplum and others?
-A: The PostgreSQL project enjoys the support of multiple companies who sell products or services built with PostgreSQL, and in turn contribute code, money and staff time to the project. None of them "own" PostgreSQL, nor is and individual company responsible for PostgreSQL code development. This is the same as Linux, Apache or FreeBSD.
Q: How does PostgreSQL compare to MySQL?
-A: This is a topic that can start several hours of discussion. As a quick summary, MySQL is the "easy-to-use, web developer" database, and PostgreSQL is the "feature-rich, standards-compliant" database. PostgreSQL is liberally licensed and owned by its community; MySQL is GPL-licensed and owned by Oracle. Beyond that, each database user should make their own evaluation; open source software makes doing your own comparison very easy.
Q: Are users migrating from MySQL to PostgreSQL in the wake of the Oracle acquisition?
-Some of them, yes. We have seen an increased number of requests for MySQL to PostgreSQL migration information in the last year. Some users are migrating to other database systems. However, the majority of MySQL users are likely continuing to use MySQL; it is still open source. A few users are also migrating from Sybase due to its aquisition.
Q: How does PostgreSQL compare to Oracle/DB2/MS SQL Server/Informix?
A: Our feature set is generally considered to be very competitive with other leading SQL RDBMSes. Certainly there are features some of them have which we don't, and the reverse is also true. To date, only a few benchmarks have been published showing PostgreSQL to be within 10-30% of proprietary competitors. However, we have had many users migrate from other database systems – primarily Oracle and Informix – and they are completely satisfied with the performance of their PostgreSQL systems.