Are we losing momentum?

With the feature set that Postgres has, it isn't going to lose momentum.

It is lacking in some areas that are slowly being addressed.

If they weren't being addressed, THEN, postgres would lose momentum.

We're fortunate to have good volunteers and the private donations of
companies as well.

Bruce Momjian wrote:

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

Several people have asked if we are losing momentum.

I don't think we are losing momentum considering the project in
isolation --- things seem to be moving as well as they ever have,
if not better.

But I do sometimes worry that we are losing the mindshare war.
We might be growing fine, but if we're growing slower than MySQL is,
we've got a problem. I was just in the local Barnes & Noble store
yesterday, and could not help but notice how many books had "MySQL" in
the title. I didn't notice a single Postgres title (though I did not
look hard, since I was just passing through the computer area).

Mindshare eventually translates into results, if only because it
means that capable developers will gravitate there instead of here.
So we need to worry about it.

There isn't anyone presently willing to spend real money and effort on
marketing PG (as you say, Red Hat won't, for reasons that have nothing
to do with the merits of the product). That means that MySQL's
marketeers have a free hand to do things like boast about features that
might materialize in a year or so :-(

I don't know what we can do about it, other than maybe push harder to
get some more PG titles into O'Reilly's catalog ... that would help
narrow the bookshelf gap a little, at least. Any wannabee authors
out there? (And Bruce, your book is due for a second edition...)

regards, tom lane

On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, Tom Lane wrote:

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

Several people have asked if we are losing momentum.

I don't think we are losing momentum considering the project in
isolation --- things seem to be moving as well as they ever have,
if not better.

I agree. I am surprised at the pace at which new features are added,
considering the relatively small number of people working on the project.

But I do sometimes worry that we are losing the mindshare war.
We might be growing fine, but if we're growing slower than MySQL is,
we've got a problem. I was just in the local Barnes & Noble store
yesterday, and could not help but notice how many books had "MySQL" in
the title. I didn't notice a single Postgres title (though I did not
look hard, since I was just passing through the computer area).

I've considered this at length. I put some ideas together in December and
sent it off to the advocacy list. Most/all were not implemented -- not
least because I didn't do anything I said I would :-). But, some of the
most important things, such as a proper media kit, quotes for journos,
press contacts with authority to give fast/correct answers really need to
be implemented.

As for why MySQL has *significantly* more market share: there's not a lot
we can match them on. They have significant financial backing -- important
if you're an IT manager who actually knows very little about the technical
merit of the product. It has close ties to a *very* widely deployed
scripting language (PHP). MySQL AB employs marketing and 'advocacy' staff,
who attend conferences all over the world, speak several languages, and
have a fairly good understanding of the industry, open source, databases,
etc. They have infrastructure: tech support, on site support,
consultancy.

MySQL AB promotes MySQL as a high performance database, easy to use,
uncomplicated, with features implemented in a way which is syntactically
convenient -- not 'complicated' like Oracle, DB2 or Postgres.

Its hard to argue against that. At a *technical* conference I recently
spoke at, I was criticised for delivering a talk which was too advanced
and didn't explain Postgres for MySQL users. During a lecture series at a
university, I was criticised for not discussing Oracle instead of Postgres
-- students told me that Oracle will make them money and Postgres wont.

Regardless, I'm still of the opinion that if you build it, they will come
-- particularly costly features like replication, PITR, etc. But maybe
that is what the BSDs say about Linux?

Gavin

Gavin Sherry wrote:

During a lecture series at a university, I was criticised for not
discussing Oracle instead of Postgres -- students told me that
Oracle will make them money and Postgres wont.

Their impressions are probably based on reality as it was a couple of
years ago before the U.S. economy came crashing down.

But today? Companies are trying to figure out how to do things
cheaper, and there are a lot of situations for which Postgres is a
good fit but for which MySQL is a bad fit -- if it'll fit at all.

I seriously think the native Win32 port of Postgres will make a big
difference, because it'll be a SQL Server killer. Especially if it
comes with a nice administrative GUI. :-)

--
Kevin Brown kevin@sysexperts.com

On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, Kevin Brown wrote:

Gavin Sherry wrote:

During a lecture series at a university, I was criticised for not
discussing Oracle instead of Postgres -- students told me that
Oracle will make them money and Postgres wont.

Their impressions are probably based on reality as it was a couple of
years ago before the U.S. economy came crashing down.

But today? Companies are trying to figure out how to do things
cheaper, and there are a lot of situations for which Postgres is a
good fit but for which MySQL is a bad fit -- if it'll fit at all.

I seriously think the native Win32 port of Postgres will make a big
difference, because it'll be a SQL Server killer. Especially if it
comes with a nice administrative GUI. :-)

I've been thinking about this too. Addressing Tom's point: any one with
Windows experience, interested in the native port and willing to write a
Windows book would probably do a lot for the project. For one, I would be
willing to help write parts which were not Windows specific -- as I
haven't used that system in some time :-).

Gavin

--On Monday, April 14, 2003 19:54:27 -0400 Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
wrote:

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

Several people have asked if we are losing momentum.

I don't think we are losing momentum considering the project in
isolation --- things seem to be moving as well as they ever have,
if not better.

But I do sometimes worry that we are losing the mindshare war.
We might be growing fine, but if we're growing slower than MySQL is,
we've got a problem. I was just in the local Barnes & Noble store
yesterday, and could not help but notice how many books had "MySQL" in
the title. I didn't notice a single Postgres title (though I did not
look hard, since I was just passing through the computer area).

I was in the Local MicroCenter, and found 3 PG titles, in addition to
Bruce's.

This is MUCH better than a year ago, when there were NONE.

Agreed, that MySQL, has a bigger shelf space.

I did all 3 authors a favor and bought copies.

LER

--
Larry Rosenman http://www.lerctr.org/~ler
Phone: +1 972-414-9812 E-Mail: ler@lerctr.org
US Mail: 1905 Steamboat Springs Drive, Garland, TX 75044-6749

Gretings!

[2003-04-14 19:54] Tom Lane said:
| Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
| > Several people have asked if we are losing momentum.

| I don't know what we can do about it, other than maybe push harder to
| get some more PG titles into O'Reilly's catalog ... that would help
| narrow the bookshelf gap a little, at least. Any wannabee authors
| out there? (And Bruce, your book is due for a second edition...)

I've wanted to pipe up in a few of these "popularity"
discussions in the past. Seeing how I can't make time to
participate in any other meaningful capacity, I'll share
my thoughts on _why_ mysql has the mindshare.

Applications, specifically applications that _use_ mysql.

A quick search over at freshmeat returns 1044 results for
"mysql" and 260 for "postgresql". Before this turns into a
cause/effect discussion, I want to state up front that the
real "effect" of this is that someone is 4 times as likely to
download an application that uses mysql. Sure, many are
"trivial" applications, but I posit that it is _specifically_
these "trivial" applications that inoculate the uninitiated
with the belief that mysql is suitable for use in real, albeit
trivial applications. Additionally, it these rudimentary
applications that will be studied by many as the way to write
a database application.

It is all good and well that postgres /can/ do, but until
the application developers see that those features are
valuable enough to forgo mysql support, they'll write the
application to support whatever database is most likely to
_already_ be installed, which will be mysql. Granted,
many developers will also try to support multiple dbs via
the language's db api, but this leaves the less-supported
dbs in an even worse position; being relegated to an
"might work with XXX database". When anxious user learns
that "might" currently means "doesn't," the second-string
database looks even worse in the eyes of the user.

How to solve this problem? This is the hard part, but
luckily ISTM that there are a few ways to succeed. Neither
of which involves marketing or writing books.

1) become active in the "also supports postgres" projects,
and add features that are made available _because_ of
postgres' superiority. Eventually, market pressure
for the cool feature(s) will lead users to choose
postgres, and mysql could be relegated to the "also
runs on mysql, with limited featureset"
2) take a popular project that uses mysql, fork it, and
add features that can only be implemented using posgres.
3) release that super-cool code that you've been hacking
on for years, especially if it is a "trivial" app.
4) convince your employer that it would be _beneficial_ to
them to release, as open source, the internal app(s) you've
developed, using postgres-specific features. (This is
about all I can claim to be doing at this point in my
indentured servitude, and I can't say I'm doing a good
job... :-/)

I'm sure this idea is not original, but I'm also sure that
it _is_ the answer to gaining market^Wmindshare in this
database market.

(I must apologize in advance, that I might not have time
to even follow this thread, in fact, I hope that instead of
replying to this, the potential respondent might consider
helping to increase the number of apps that require postgres
:-)

wishing-I-could-contribute-more-ly yours,
brent

--
"Develop your talent, man, and leave the world something. Records are
really gifts from people. To think that an artist would love you enough
to share his music with anyone is a beautiful thing." -- Duane Allman

1) become active in the "also supports postgres" projects,
and add features that are made available _because_ of
postgres' superiority. Eventually, market pressure
for the cool feature(s) will lead users to choose
postgres, and mysql could be relegated to the "also
runs on mysql, with limited featureset"

Take, for example, phpPgAdmin. It was originally forked from phpMyAdmin, but we've just done a complete rewrite (because phpMyAdmin was written my mysql/php weenies who couldn't code nicely to save their lives...).

However, it's me doing 99% of the coding, Rob doing advocacy and a heap of people who send in translations. Translations are very nice, but I so rarely get actual code contributions.

phpMyAdmin even implements it's OWN comment and foreign key feature!!

Chris

Kevin, without the "e", wrote...

I seriously think the native Win32 port of Postgres will make a big
difference, because it'll be a SQL Server killer. Especially if it
comes with a nice administrative GUI. :-)

I wouldn't be too sanguine about that, from two perspectives:

a) There's a moving target, here, in that Microsoft seems to be
looking for the next "new thing" to be the elimination of
the use of "files" in favor of the filesystem being treated
as a database.

b) We recently were considering how we'd put a sharable Windows box
in, at the office. Were considering using VNC to allow it to be
accessible. Then someone thought to read the license, only to
discover that the license pretty much expressly forbids running
"foreign, competing applications" on the platform.

It seems pretty plausible that the net result of further development
will be platforms that are actively hostile to foreign software.

If I suggested that the licensing of Win2003 would expressly forbid
installing PostgreSQL, people would rightly accuse me of being a
paranoid conspiracy theorist.

But considering that the thought of VNC being outlawed would have seemed
pretty daft a few years ago, and we see things like DMCA combining with
"Homeland Security." Anti-"hacking" provisions have been going into
telecom laws that appear to classify network hardware that can do NAT as
"illegal hacking" equipment. I'm not sure what we'd have to consider
"daft" come 2005...
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "gro.mca@" "enworbbc"))
http://cbbrowne.com/info/internet.html
"Heuristics (from the French heure, "hour") limit the amount of time
spent executing something. [When using heuristics] it shouldn't take
longer than an hour to do something."

On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, Brent Verner wrote:

Applications, specifically applications that _use_ mysql.

A quick search over at freshmeat returns 1044 results for
"mysql" and 260 for "postgresql".

That's a pretty reasonable thought. I work for a shop that sells
Postgres support, and even we install MySQL for the Q&D ticket tracking
system we recommend because we can't justify the cost to port it to
postgres. If the postgres support were there, we would surely be using it.

How to fix such a situation, I'm not sure. "MySQL Compatability Mode,"
anyone? :-)

cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.netbsd.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC

I agree, things aren't good when you look at the book shelf and app
support, but fortunately these are things that are shaded more by the
state of things 1-3 years ago rather than currently.  Certainly, we
would have seen an even worse ratio than 1:4 if we had looked last year
--- we aren't on parity yet, but I think we are getting there.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Larry Rosenman wrote:

--On Monday, April 14, 2003 19:54:27 -0400 Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
wrote:

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

Several people have asked if we are losing momentum.

I don't think we are losing momentum considering the project in
isolation --- things seem to be moving as well as they ever have,
if not better.

But I do sometimes worry that we are losing the mindshare war.
We might be growing fine, but if we're growing slower than MySQL is,
we've got a problem. I was just in the local Barnes & Noble store
yesterday, and could not help but notice how many books had "MySQL" in
the title. I didn't notice a single Postgres title (though I did not
look hard, since I was just passing through the computer area).

I was in the Local MicroCenter, and found 3 PG titles, in addition to
Bruce's.

This is MUCH better than a year ago, when there were NONE.

Agreed, that MySQL, has a bigger shelf space.

I did all 3 authors a favor and bought copies.

LER

--
Larry Rosenman http://www.lerctr.org/~ler
Phone: +1 972-414-9812 E-Mail: ler@lerctr.org
US Mail: 1905 Steamboat Springs Drive, Garland, TX 75044-6749

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

That's a pretty reasonable thought. I work for a shop that sells
Postgres support, and even we install MySQL for the Q&D ticket tracking
system we recommend because we can't justify the cost to port it to
postgres. If the postgres support were there, we would surely be using it.

How to fix such a situation, I'm not sure. "MySQL Compatability Mode,"
anyone? :-)

The real problem is PHP. PHP is just the cruftiest language ever invented (trust me, I use it every day). The PHP people are totally dedicated to MySQL, to the exclusion of all rational thought (eg. When I asked Rasmas at a conference about race conditions in his replicated setup, he replied "it's never going to happen - MySQL's replication is just too fast...).

Chris

cbbrowne@cbbrowne.com wrote:

Kevin, without the "e", wrote...

I seriously think the native Win32 port of Postgres will make a big
difference, because it'll be a SQL Server killer. Especially if it
comes with a nice administrative GUI. :-)

I agree. I don't think PostgreSQL will be a SQL Server killer,
but my completely ignorant guess is that 90% of the cause of the
*initial* gap between mySQL and PostgreSQL grew out of the fact
that a Win32 version of mySQL was available. Once the gap became
present, one then had to suffer switching costs. If the
features/performance of PostgreSQL > mySQL switching costs, then
PostgreSQL wins in the long term. Without a Win32 port, the
switching costs also include those switching costs associated
with switching from Win32 to Unix.

I wouldn't be too sanguine about that, from two perspectives:

a) There's a moving target, here, in that Microsoft seems to be
looking for the next "new thing" to be the elimination of
the use of "files" in favor of the filesystem being treated
as a database.

They ought to get their database up to speed first, it seems to
me. I agree Microsoft's view of data management is a moving
target. 6 years ago everything, including network resources were
going to be accessed strickly through an OLE2 Compound Document
interface and OLE structured storage. Then the Internet got hot
and all data suddenly had to be accessible through URLs. Now
it's XML that hot. Perhaps the Microsoft filesystem of the
future will be one big XML document ;-)

b) We recently were considering how we'd put a sharable Windows box
in, at the office. Were considering using VNC to allow it to be
accessible. Then someone thought to read the license, only to
discover that the license pretty much expressly forbids running
"foreign, competing applications" on the platform.

It seems pretty plausible that the net result of further development
will be platforms that are actively hostile to foreign software.

If I suggested that the licensing of Win2003 would expressly forbid
installing PostgreSQL, people would rightly accuse me of being a
paranoid conspiracy theorist.

I think you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist. :-)

Mike Mascari
mascarm@mascari.com

Bruce Momjian wrote:

I agree, things aren't good when you look at the book shelf and app
support, but fortunately these are things that are shaded more by the
state of things 1-3 years ago rather than currently.  Certainly, we
would have seen an even worse ratio than 1:4 if we had looked last year
--- we aren't on parity yet, but I think we are getting there.

What's missing are the "FOO Applications With PostgreSQL" sorts of
books, where
(member FOO '(|Web| |PHP| |Perl| |Python| |Application Frameworks|))

The one PostgreSQL book that _does_ have some of this is the O'Reilly
one, where I was disappointed to see how much of the book was devoted to
a framework I /wasn't/ planning to use.

Right at the moment is probably /not/ a good time to be pushing books on
potentially-obscure application areas; my ex-publisher (Wrox) just
became an ex-publisher as a result of trying too hard to too quickly
hawk too many books in obscure application areas.

My suspicion is that this, along with very soft book sales throughout
the publishing industry, is likely to make "obscure application area"
books a tough sell in the short term. Like it or not, "PostgreSQL +
FOO" is not going to be the easiest sell, particularly in the absence of
the much denigrated "PostgreSQL Marketing Cabal."
--
output = ("cbbrowne" "@cbbrowne.com")
http://cbbrowne.com/info/wp.html
"There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your
face." -- Ben Williams

"Tom" == Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> writes:

Tom> But I do sometimes worry that we are losing the mindshare
Tom> war. We might be growing fine, but if we're growing slower
Tom> than MySQL is, we've got a problem. I was just in the local

This is probably true. Once people get exposed to PostgreSQL then
there is a fair chance of forming an opinion. Today one of the
undergraduates in my class was telling me how after hacking pgsql
internals he has such a different impression of the two systems
(earlier he'd built a site with MySQL going by the "works for
slashdot" philosophy).

--
Peace, at last ?
Sailesh
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~sailesh

Mike Mascari wrote:

cbbrowne@cbbrowne.com wrote:

I wouldn't be too sanguine about that, from two perspectives:

a) There's a moving target, here, in that Microsoft seems to be
looking for the next "new thing" to be the elimination of
the use of "files" in favor of the filesystem being treated
as a database.

They ought to get their database up to speed first, it seems to
me. I agree Microsoft's view of data management is a moving
target.

Not to mention the fact that there's a significant number of NT 4
servers still out there -- what is that, 7 years old? A lot of places
aren't upgrading because they don't need to & don't want to shell out
the cash. (And it should go without saying that Microsoft is none too
happy with it.) With Windows 2K3 just coming out and who knows how much
longer until the next version (or ther version after that, who knows
when these "features" will actually show up), there's still a
significant window in there for conventional database servers,
especially for the price conscious out there.

----
Jeff Hoffmann
PropertyKey.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Hoffmann [mailto:jeff@propertykey.com]
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 8:54 PM
To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Are we losing momentum?

Mike Mascari wrote:

cbbrowne@cbbrowne.com wrote:

I wouldn't be too sanguine about that, from two perspectives:

a) There's a moving target, here, in that Microsoft seems to be
looking for the next "new thing" to be the elimination of
the use of "files" in favor of the filesystem being treated
as a database.

This is a very, very good idea. In fact IBM has been doing it for
years. For that matter, so has OpenVMS. What's that -- 30 year old
technology?

I have always thought that a native file system should be a hierarchy
like Adabas(IBM Mainframe), DBMS(OpenVMS) or Raima(PC's & UNIX) for a
model. It is a very natural fit. The OS contains disk devices which
contain directories, subdirectories, and files. Set ownership model
seems to fit perfectly.

They ought to get their database up to speed first, it

seems to me. I

agree Microsoft's view of data management is a moving target.

Not to mention the fact that there's a significant number of NT 4
servers still out there -- what is that, 7 years old? A lot
of places
aren't upgrading because they don't need to & don't want to shell out
the cash. (And it should go without saying that Microsoft is
none too
happy with it.) With Windows 2K3 just coming out and who
knows how much
longer until the next version (or ther version after that, who knows
when these "features" will actually show up), there's still a
significant window in there for conventional database servers,
especially for the price conscious out there.

SQL*Server is a very good database. The optimizer is outstanding for
complex queries.

There are clearly places where PostgreSQL does have a distinct
advantage. Price a 1000 user system for SQL*Server and PostgreSQL and
you will see that we can hire a couple of DBA's just for the price
difference. Since you can purchase PostgreSQL support, that is no
longer a significant advantage for MS.

And about MySQL:
It's also commercial. You are not supposed to use it except for a
single machine for personal use unless you are a non-profit organization
or unless absolutely everything you do is GPL[1]I realize that people cheat on this all the time. In theory, they could all go to jail for it. It is certainly not a risk I would be willing to take. I have also bumped into people who had no idea that commercial use requires a commercial license for MySQL. There are probably lots of people in that boat too.. Hence, you have to
license it to deploy applications. In order to have transactions, you
have to use another commercial product that they bolt into MySQL --
Sleepycat software's database. Now you have two license systems to
worry about.

Compared to PostgreSQL, both of these tools cost an arm and a leg.
SQL*Server is closed. You have to rely on MS to fix any problems that
crop up. MySQL has a very restrictive license [for those who might
happen to bother to read such things] for both modifications to the code
and also redistribution of applications.

[1]: I realize that people cheat on this all the time. In theory, they could all go to jail for it. It is certainly not a risk I would be willing to take. I have also bumped into people who had no idea that commercial use requires a commercial license for MySQL. There are probably lots of people in that boat too.
could all go to jail for it. It is certainly not a risk I would be
willing to take. I have also bumped into people who had no idea that
commercial use requires a commercial license for MySQL. There are
probably lots of people in that boat too.

IMVHO it's reference customers/users more than books & windows ports.

If I were a naive middle manager in some company, would I rather
use:

(a) the database used by Yahoo, Cisco, and Sony?
(b) the database used by Shannon Med Center, Mohawk SW, Vanten Inc, and BASF.

Now suppose I told that same middle manager there was an open
source alternative:

(c) used by Lockheed Martin, Nasdaq, AOL, and Unisys.

As far as I can tell (5-minutes searching) (c) is PostgreSQL.

http://jobsearch.monster.com/jobsearch.asp?q=postgresql
http://www.hotjobs.com/cgi-bin/job-search?KEYWORDS=postgres
http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=1002&amp;dockey=xml/8/1/816e9b7e50ae92331bb5c47a791a589f@activejobs0&amp;c=1
http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=1002&amp;dockey=xml/c/8/c8dc5841d18329c6c50b55f67a7ff038@activejobs0&amp;c=1
http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=1002&amp;dockey=xml/1/6/168f30dc84b8f195d1fc35feb6a2f67a@activejobs0&amp;c=1
"The Nasdaq Stock Market ... currently looking to fill the following
positions in Trumbull, CT...Some positions require knowledge of ...Postgre SQL.."

I'm not sure quite what it'd take to get the permission to use
these company's names, but surely we could have a list of links
to the job postings... I'd bet that one of monster, hotjobs,
and/or dice would even provide a datafeed of relevant jobs to
be posted on the postgresql.org site.

If we simply had a list of companies using postgresql highly visible
somewhere -- not necessarily a complex case study, just simple list
of "company X uses postgresql for Y" statements -- I think it would
go a long way. I'll contribute. InterVideo uses postgresql (for
running user surveys and some internal reporting and development tools).

Ron

PS: No offense to Shannon, Mohawk, Vanten, and yes, I know BASF is
an awesome company. But they're all, even BASF, less of
a household name than Sony,Yahoo,Cisco,AOL,Nasdaq,Lockheed.

And about MySQL:
It's also commercial. You are not supposed to use it except for a
single machine for personal use unless you are a non-profit organization
or unless absolutely everything you do is GPL[1]. Hence, you have to
license it to deploy applications. In order to have transactions, you
have to use another commercial product that they bolt into MySQL --
Sleepycat software's database. Now you have two license systems to
worry about.

Just a correction - you need to use the InnoDB database engine, which is
free and GPL and bundled with MySQL.

Chris