MySQL vs. PostgreSQL: The 2010 Database Debate in the Shadow of Oracle

It has been a rough few months for the open-source community. Since Oracle finalized its acquisition of Sun Microsystems earlier this year, every sysadmin I talk to at the Oslo LUG (Linux User Group) is asking the same question: "Is it time to abandon MySQL?"

While the forks like MariaDB are promising, they are still young. Right now, on June 3, 2010, you have a critical architectural decision to make for your next deployment. Do you stick with the ubiquity of MySQL 5.1, or do you make the jump to the robust, strict world of PostgreSQL 8.4?

I’ve managed database clusters for high-traffic Norwegian news portals and e-commerce shops relying on NETS for payments. I’ve seen MyISAM tables lock up entirely under write load, and I’ve seen Postgres queries save a project from complex application-side logic. Here is the reality of choosing your backend in 2010.

The MySQL 5.1 Situation: Speed vs. Data Integrity

MySQL is the default for a reason. It is the 'M' in LAMP stack. It is everywhere. If you are running a simple blog or a read-heavy CMS, MySQL is often faster out of the box because it does less.

However, the default storage engine, MyISAM, is a ticking time bomb for any serious application. MyISAM uses table-level locking. This means if one user is writing to your users table, nobody else can read from it until that write is finished. On a site with high concurrency, this creates a massive bottleneck.

The Fix: You must use InnoDB. It provides row-level locking and transactions (ACID compliance). If you are hosting on CoolVDS, we strongly recommend enabling the InnoDB Plugin for better performance on multicore CPUs.

# Inside /etc/my.cnf
[mysqld]
default-storage-engine = InnoDB
innodb_buffer_pool_size = 512M  # Adjust based on your VPS RAM
innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit = 2 # For speed, if you can risk 1 sec of data loss

PostgreSQL 8.4: The "Enterprise" Open Source Choice

PostgreSQL has always been the "academic" database, but version 8.4 (released last year) turned it into a production beast. It handles concurrency significantly better than MySQL because it uses MVCC (Multi-Version Concurrency Control). Readers don't block writers, and writers don't block readers.

For developers handling complex datasets—like geospatial data for Norwegian mapping services—PostGIS is lightyears ahead of MySQL's spatial extensions.

War Story: We recently migrated a client running a booking system from MySQL to Postgres. They were suffering from phantom reads where double-bookings occurred during peak hours. MySQL's default isolation levels were too loose. Switching to Postgres and utilizing its strict transaction isolation solved the integrity issues overnight without changing the application logic.

Performance Benchmarks: The I/O Bottleneck

In 2010, CPU is rarely your bottleneck for databases. It is almost always Disk I/O. Both MySQL and Postgres will crawl if your underlying storage subsystem is slow. This is where the "noisy neighbor" problem in virtualization kills you.

Many budget hosts in Europe pile hundreds of OpenVZ containers onto a single server with standard SATA 7.2k RPM drives. If one user runs a heavy backup script, your database latency spikes from 2ms to 200ms.

The CoolVDS Advantage: Hardware RAID and Isolation

At CoolVDS, we approach this differently. We don't oversell our storage arrays. We use hardware RAID 10 with high-speed SAS drives and early-adoption Enterprise SSD caching layers where available. This ensures that when you run a SELECT * with a heavy JOIN, the disk responds instantly.

Furthermore, our use of KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) virtualization ensures that your RAM is dedicated. When you allocate 4GB to Postgres shared_buffers, that memory belongs to you, not a shared pool.

Compliance: Datatilsynet and Your Data

Hosting data outside of Norway is becoming legally complex. The Personal Data Act (Personopplysningsloven) mandates strict control over sensitive user data. If you are storing Norwegian customer data, latency isn't your only concern—legal jurisdiction is.

By choosing a VPS Norway solution, you ensure traffic stays local. Ping times from Oslo to our datacenter are typically under 5ms. This low latency is critical for database connections, especially if your web server and database server are communicating over the private network.

Conclusion: Which One?

• Choose MySQL if you are running a standard CMS like WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, and need maximum compatibility with existing plugins.
• Choose PostgreSQL if you are building a custom application, require strict data integrity, complex JOINs, or are worried about the future licensing of Oracle-owned products.

Regardless of your engine choice, a slow disk will kill your application performance. Don't let IOwait destroy your user experience.

Ready to test the difference? Spin up a CoolVDS instance with dedicated resources today. We offer managed hosting support to help you tune your my.cnf or postgresql.conf for our high-performance infrastructure.