[Gllug] MySQL Woes

itsbruce at uklinux.net itsbruce at uklinux.net
Wed Jun 12 10:19:58 UTC 2002


On Wed, Jun 12, 2002 at 10:30:59AM +0100, Jackson, Harry wrote:
> I am trying to implement a database and thought that with all the hype MySQL
> gets that I could do it on that. Much to my dismay I have just noticed that.
> 
> 1. No method for referential Integrity.
> 
> 2. No Stored Procedures

3.  No transactions.

4.  No Views.

5.  No record locking (just whole-table locking)


MySQL isn't a proper database, though many of the people who use it to
implement light databases for web applications don't know what a proper
database is and don't need one.

You could argue that for a web application, transactions are less
useful.  Stored Procedures aren't universally applauded, as you may
remember from a little argument on this list a while back.  But views
are an incredibly useful feature, saving pages of needless coding.
The section in the MySQL manual explaining the lack of views is the
usual self justifying half-truths and nearly-lies.

The reason MySQL is fast is because of all the things it doesn't
implement.  And that speed disappears as soon as you need to do multiple
concurrent updates becaue each update locks all the tables involved
until it is finished.

On a slight tangent, one thing that annoys me is the number of
developers who only write for mysql when both Perl and PHP have
database-independent modules that do a perfectly good job.

-- 
Bruce

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