In contrast to my recent rant about database comparisons, I was pretty impressed with the Oracle 10g vs PostgreSQL 8 vs MySQL 5 article. The two articles don’t compare the same issues, but I’d like to point out how well this one done.
Right from the start the author states his bias upfront (he is a long time Oracle admin), along with what was being compared. In this case the focus was on installing on a lower end Windows 2000 system. All of the factors were spelled out and the scoring method was described in sufficient detail. Each factor had some discussion and and a score for each database.
Overall I’d consider this a good example of a database comparison, it has a well defined (and narrow) focus with an upfront scoring system. My only complaint with this review was in the “Documentation and Getting Started Support” section. Although PostgreSQL and MySQL basically have the same issues in the discussion area, the scores are different. Given how well the rest of the review was done I don’t think this issue completely ruins the review, just provides a low point.
I hope that the author, Lewis R Cunningham, continues to do additional reviews of these three databases using this same format.