Why The Statement “MySQL Is Faster Than PostgreSQL” Is Wrong
I’ve come across a lot of hardcore MySQL fanboys who say they use MySQL because it’s faster than PostgreSQL. On a certain level, this statement is wrong. While I agree that, generally speaking, MySQL is faster than PostgreSQL, you have to understand that developers like that don’t take load into account. Most of the benchmarks they cite aren’t real world benchmarks; they test how fast data is delivered from the database, but don’t test how well the database performs under high load. In that respect, PostgreSQL beats MySQL hands down on multi-core, multi-processor, real-world servers, while MySQL crumbles under the load. This is due to the way PostgreSQL is built; PostgreSQL is an excellent example of good multi-threaded programming, and it scales almost linearly up to about 16 cores (as of version 8.0). And honestly, who cares if MySQL can deliver a simple query 0.01ms faster than PostgreSQL under no load? Promoting your database of choice with that argument is childish.
But that’s not the reason I like PostgreSQL. I like it because it offers a wealth of features that make my life a whole lot easier, it allows for better data integrity than MySQL, and it does all that with far less “gotcha’s” than MySQL.