MySQL Can Handle Most Things — Do You Really Need PostgreSQL or Oracle? 🤔💾

#webdev #frontend #mysql #devops

You’re not running Google.
You’re not running Ant Financial either.

So why are you trying to use a database built for high concurrency, financial-grade risk control, and distributed transactions?

What Do You Actually Need?

You have:

3 tables
2 pages
A boss who wants it live in 2 weeks

And somehow you spun up:

PostgreSQL + pgBouncer + Patroni for HA
Kafka for messaging
Flink for stream processing
ClickHouse for analytics

Bro, are you building a bullet train or flipping pancakes?

Commercial Databases Are Awesome — When You Need Them

Let’s be real. Oracle, MSSQL, and other commercial databases cost 3–4x more than MySQL for a reason.

Oracle RAC’s high availability? Rock solid. Millisecond failover, detailed diagnostic reports, and on-site engineers who’ll camp at your office for a month if needed. I once had an Oracle support team of 4 people come on-site to debug my system — they told me what configs were wrong, what could be optimized, and even pointed out unrelated system issues just out of goodwill.

On the flip side, Microsoft SQL Server’s support? Try submitting a ticket online and waiting. One time, a critical cluster failover was delayed because my Windows patch was incomplete — and support just kept postponing until the system was fully updated. I had to pull my company’s internal Windows server team just to fix it.

And MySQL? The open source version is mostly Google and stackoverflow. I’ve debugged MySQL instances for friends — mostly just hunting down blog posts and piecing together random advice. The commercial MySQL enterprise monitor? Heard of it, never used it.

Stability Is King — You Need Someone to Take the Fall

Commercial databases aren’t just selling software. They’re selling peace of mind. You pay for someone to be the scapegoat when everything hits the fan.

There’s a real-world story from a Chinese central enterprise managing billions in assets using Sybase. During routine archiving, a RAID hard disk was replaced without syncing with the archiving team. The database crashed at a critical moment. Recovery time threatened public service announcements. The IT manager stayed up all night preparing to resign. Then SAP (who owns Sybase) sent their top engineers — called the “Four Heavenly Kings” — who worked overnight and saved the system by dawn.

This is why enterprises spend big on commercial DBs: stability and support when things go wrong.

MySQL’s Reality Check — What It Can’t Do

MySQL community edition is powerful but has limits. Oracle and PostgreSQL still outclass it in many aspects:

PostgreSQL supports partial (conditional) indexes, MySQL doesn’t.
PostgreSQL can do complex recursive queries (WITH RECURSIVE), MySQL can’t.
Non-primary indexes can be clustered in PostgreSQL; MySQL flat out refuses.

And many internet giants rely on heavy middleware to work around MySQL’s shortcomings — effectively making MySQL into a NoSQL-ish beast with denormalization and sharding.

Why Do Legacy Industries Still Choose Commercial DBs?

Because they can’t afford downtime or data loss. Stability and professional emergency support outweigh licensing fees.

High-value, high-stakes industries want:

Guaranteed backups and recovery plans
Enterprise-grade monitoring tools (Oracle’s AWR, ADDM, ASH reports)
Engineers who answer your call at 3 AM

That’s why Oracle and MSSQL still dominate banking, telecom, and government sectors.

For Most Devs and Small Projects — Keep It Simple and Use MySQL + ServBay

If you’re just building a tool, a prototype, or learning, spinning up a full PostgreSQL HA cluster with Kafka and Flink is overkill.

Instead, try ServBay: an easy one-click local dev environment with MySQL + PHP, no configuration hassle. It lets you focus on writing code, not babysitting clusters.

Seriously, if you’re not running a billion-user app, save yourself the headache. Use the right tool for the right job.

Final Words

There’s no “best” database — only the one that fits your needs.

Don’t bring an aircraft carrier to run a taco stand.

Pick the right tools, save time, ship faster, and maybe get off work before sunset.

PS: If this article rubbed you the wrong way, maybe it’s time to rethink why you’re coding like you work at Google — when you’re just coding for yourself.