Hiya list, A friend recently told me that, among other things, the institutions for which he works tend to choose MySQL or MSSQL over Postgres because the latter requires a dedicated DBA while the former do not. When they do spring for a DBA, they go with Oracle. As a developer/end-user in/of the MySQL/Postgres/Oracle environments, I can say hands down that I prefer Postgres and I have a list of reasons why to which I can readily refer. However, I'm not a DBA and only minimally know what's involved in doing the job, so I don't have "ammo" to defend (or agree?) with my friend when he says that "Postgres requires a DBA and MySQL doesn't so that's why they choose the latter." Basically, I have so far not run across the need to mess with any of the tunables. (I am naive, I know.) Clearly, one should generally pick the best tool for the job, so I'm no pundit that Postgres is *always* the right answer, but I'd like to be informed. My questions: - With 8.2, and the almost-out 8.3, what kinds of responsibilities should a Postgres DBA expect to have? - More in line with the conversation with my friend, what/why is it that Postgres needs a DBA while MySQL doesn't? I highly suspect that the assumption that MySQL doesn't need a DBA is incorrect, but that's what was posed to me and I couldn't agree or disagree. I am familiar with Greg Smith et al's page: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/techdocs.83 Thoughts? Thanks in advance, Kevin P.S. BTW Greg et al, thank you a *ton* for putting that document together. I learned a lot watching the discussion on the list and reading the final version. ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org/
