A new version of Postgres has been released – 7.4.

Of course, there was the usual banter on /. about the relative merits of Postgres vs. mySQL, but that’s to me expected. The banter was, for the most part, just that – less of the Holy RDBMS Wars rhetoric that these two tools usually spark.

Not certain why, exactly: Especially since mySQL has made such strides recently (finally getting some serious functionality, such as subselects and so on). Or maybe that’s quieted the mySQL crowd: The additional features being piled on make them more aware that these features were not only missing in the past, but that they are reeeealllly needed.

My stance? Same as ever: I run both. I prefer Postgres by a vast margin, even though I run both DBs at a much less than enterprise level – I really don’t need the higher-end (or even SQL standard) featues that are present in Postgres but not in mySQL. I could work around the shortfalls. But why not run the more complete one?

And I still think mySQL is the “Access” of OSS databases, but I’m not one who is shy about saying that Access has some extremely compelling features (large installed base, no-brainer to use, hides complexity [good for newbies] but provides SQL for queries etc.).

Both are tools. If mySQL was as unpopular – relatively – as Postgres, I would never touch it. I think it’s a vastly inferior database. But it does have the installed base, and it is powerful enough to do much of what is needed on Web sites (my specialty), so it behooves me to learn it.

And – as one /. comment put it – mySQL is to Postgres what Windows is to Linux: One is much more popular despite its (in some ways) perceived inferiority, but that gooses the underachiever to make better products and try harder.

The old competition is good argument.