MySQL Vs PostgreSQL Performance

Data is a collection of different observations and facts. Over time. Developers realize that handling data is becoming crucial since the world is becoming more connected through the internet. Today, enterprises utilize data to analyze potential clients and decrease risks.

That's why there is an ever-rising requirement for relational and object-oriented databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc. However, there needs to be more clarity when selecting between MySQL and PostgreSQL databases. Thus, we have designed this MySQL vs PostgreSQL blog to discuss the differences between these two databases.

Table of Content

• What is MySQL?
• Features of MySQL
• MySQL Use Cases
• Advantages of MySQL
• When to use MySQL?
• What is PostgreSQL
• PostgreSQL Features
• PostgreSQL Use Cases
• When to use PostgreSQL?
• Advantages of PostgreSQL
• MySQL vs PostgreSQL

What is MySQL?

MySQL is a relational database system. One of the most unique features of MySQL is its ease of use. It provides simple configuration and installation procedures, making it accessible to the users of different levels. It is multitasking, multithreaded, and is developed to work in the heavy-load production systems. It contains transactional and non-transactional engines and is one of the most straightforward database systems.  

Its user-friendly graphical user interface and command-line interface have assisted in its popularity among developers. It is a part of LAMP stack and LAMP stack is highly famous in web development. The freeware open-stack of the web applications contains Apache HTTP Server, Linux, PHP, and MySQL.

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Features of MySQL

Regular Updates: MySQL has become more robust with regular updates and the latest features and security enhancements. 

Open-source: MySQL is an open-source and free RDBMS(Relational Database Management System).

Supportive Community: A Supportive community of developers is available to help you troubleshoot as and when required.

MVCC Features: MySQL's recent version offers MVCC(Multi-version Concurrency Control) features.

History: MySQL has been around for more than 20 years.

Oracle Maintenance: MySQL is owned and maintained by Oracle. It also provides premium versions of MySQL with proprietary plugins, additional services, user extensions, and plugins.

Users: MySQL is widely used by tech companies like Flickr, NASA, Google, GitHub, Tesla, and Netflix.

MySQL Use Cases

E-commerce Applications: MySQL is one of the most widespread transactional machines for e-commerce applications. It is suitable for handling customer data transactions and product catalogs. In e-commerce applications, MySQL is often utilized parallelly with other non-relational databases, like document and key-value stores, for storing non-product data.

OLTP: Transactions need accuracy and speed. MySQL can be extended to 1000s of quarters per second with ease and efficiency. The transaction needs to ensure consistency, atomicity, isolation, and durability. MySQL complies with the ACID principles, making it secure for crucial transactions. If the system fails during the transaction, it reverts to the checkpoint.

LAMP: Applications that operate on the LAMP stack use MySQL as their database. Since MySQL is popular due to its scalability and multithreading, it is the go-to database for high-performance and dynamic web applications.

Advantages of MySQL

1) MySQL supports Master-Slave Replication and Scale-Out.

2) MySQL is free to download and use from the official site.

3) MySQL is compatible with most operating systems like NxtWay, Linux, Windows, Solaris, and other versions of Unix.

4) MySQL's distinct storage architecture makes it more reliable, faster, and cheaper.

5) MySQL is the relational database management system that stores and displays data in tabular form and organizes it into rows and columns.

6) It provides higher productivity through Triggers, Stored Procedures, and Views.

When to use MySQL?

When we need to integrate data from various table types, MySQL's wide variety of storage engines would be helpful. MySQL is ideal for applications that require speed and reliability. Since many cloud platforms offer MySQL services, we can use it for storing the data on cloud. Professionals who don't have a high level of knowledge of databases can choose MySQL.  

What is PostgreSQL?

PostgreSQL is a freeware object-relational database management system. It is entirely SQL-flexible and developed on feature-rich, it is also extendable, making it helpful for anyone who requires tools. It was mainly developed for efficiency and can be incorporated into almost any software. It is object-oriented, enabling it to scale data types for creating custom types. 

Gain a deeper understanding of PostgreSQL through hands-on practice and comprehensive clarification of your queries during our PostgreSQL Training sessions led by experienced trainers.

PostgreSQL Features

Features of PostgreSQL are as follows:

Supporting several data types: PostgreSQL supports all the primary data types like Strings, integers, timestamps, binary objects, and Char.

Scalability: It is popular due to its scalability. Thus, it is suitable for enterprise applications and web applications.

Open-source: PostgreSQL is an open-source database with an open-source license allowing users to share the Database wherever they want.

Developers Community: PostgreSQL has a dedicated community of volunteers and developers. 

Reliability: It endorses joins, views, stored procedures, and foreign keys in various languages. Because of the write-ahead logging feature, PostgreSQL is fault-tolerant and supports data backup and recovery.

Adaptive: It endorses stored procedures and functions and contains more capabilities and features other than database systems.

PostgreSQL Use Cases

Web Technologies: Although PostgreSQL is a relational database, it supports NoSQL data storage. It can operate in several advanced frameworks like Django, PHP, Hibernate, and Ruby on Rails. 

Scientific Projects: Since Scientific and Research projects produce vast amounts of data, they require analytics capabilities and the SQL engine of PostgreSQL to process that vast data. 

GIS Data: The PostGIS extension of PostgreSQL helps you process geometric forms like line strings and forms and is maximized to reduce memory and disk footprint and enhance query performance. Water infrastructure and emergency services use GIS for locating crew members and guide them to destinations.

Manufacturing Sector: Since Manufacturing industries need a lot of data storage facilities, PostgreSQL is ideal for storing and optimizing supply chain data. Moreover, Oracle's new license policies have made it difficult for small industries to use the Oracle database; PostgreSQL is suitable for them.

When to use PostgreSQL?

As PostgreSQL is an object-relational programming language, we can use it when we need object-oriented and procedural/relational programming features.

PostgreSQL is a good choice for performing complex read-write operations while using the data needs validation. It is also useful when we need support for NoSQL features. When we have to prevent data corruption and preserve data integrity, we can select PostgreSQL as our database.

Advantages of PostgreSQL

1) PostgreSQL can execute dynamic websites and web applications as the LAMP stack option.

2) PostgreSQL supports geographic objects so that you can utilize it for geographic information systems and location-oriented services.

3) For learning PostgreSQL, you don't require training since it is easy to use.

4) Under the open-source license, PostgreSQL code is available freely.

5) The administration and maintenance cost of PostgreSQL is very low.

MySQL vs PostgreSQL

1) Performance

MySQL

MySQL is popular for its ability and high performance in processing massive amounts of data. MySQL has performance optimization and rapid indexing systems that help you enhance query performance and handle heavy workloads. However, Concurrency problems can happen when combined with the write operations, which leads to performance deterioration. It is because of the implementation of Locks at the table level, hindering all the actions while performing write operations.

InnoDB storage engine is used for solving the table-level locking problem. It is one of the extensively utilized storage engines in MySQL database. It supports row-level rocking and enhances concurrency for heavy workloads. 

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is more versatile than MySQL and handles both read-heavy and write-heavy workloads, but it has lower performance than MySQL. However, PostgreSQL has enhanced its performance in the latest versions, specifically in complex queries and data processing. Moreover, PostgreSQL contains an advanced indexing system that can enhance performance for complex queries, unlike MySQL. It also supports advanced JSONB and Arrays.

The performance of MySQL and PostgreSQL depends on various factors like Hardware, query difficulty, and data size. While choosing between two, we have to consider our application requirements and do performance testing with your workloads and data to determine the best suitable one.

2) Syntax

SQL Syntax is similar for both databases. However, MySQL does not support all the syntaxes of MySQL. Both MySQL and PostgreSQL support similar syntaxes. 

MySQL sample query:

 Select * from Students;

PostgreSQL sample query:

Select * from employees;

3) Replication

Replication is a mechanism that enables us to replicate data from the database to its replicated databases. This process ensures that all the users have a similar level of information. It gives several advantages like scalability, fault tolerance, automated backup, and the capability to perform complex queries without impacting the base cluster.

MySQL and PostgreSQL support replication. PostgreSQL provides synchronous replication, which indicates that two databases are running concurrently. In PostgreSQL, we can do cascading and synchronous replication. MySQL supports one-way asynchronous replication. It suggests that one database server serves as the main one and the other databases as replicas.

4) Architecture

MySQL is a relational database with 15 different storage engines besides its default ones. The wide variety of storage engines will allow you to use them rapidly for other applications. MySQL uses a single process and preserves a single thread for all the connections. 

MySQL Layered Architecture

PostgreSQL is an object-relational database and provides more advanced data types. PostgreSQL contains an ACID-compliant storage engine. It creates a new system process using the memory allocation for all the client connections.

PostgreSQL Process and Memory Architecture

5) Speed

Speed is the inherent factor while determining the suitable database for your enterprise requirements. A quick database assures that your website runs rapidly and will help you mitigate the pressure on the servers by finding unused data we can remove. MySQL and PostgreSQL are known for being some of the rapid DBMS solutions in the market. However, there is no outright winner in this category. We can quickly discover benchmarks that suggest one database as per the test, configuration, and hardware.

6) Ease of Use

MySQL database is popular because of its ease of use. Installing and Setting up MySQL environment is easy throughout operating systems. But, its constraints in respect of SQL and database features can lead to difficulties in developing databases.

PostgreSQL is the easy-to-use database and it can handle both unstructured and structured data. By installing from the source code, you will get fime-drawn control on the installation.

7) Extensibility

PostgreSQL is a largely extensible tool as it supports several advanced data types that are unavailable in MySQL. PostGIS is the most crucial extension of PostgreSQL and provides geospatial capabilities. Moreover, Foreign Data Wrapper enables you to query the data in other data systems. MySQL has a pluggable data storage architecture and invented InnoDB. Today, InnoDB has become the most famous storage engine in MySQL.

8) Indexes

We can utilize the indexes to enhance the database performance by accelerating the SQL queries while tackling the extensive table data. With indexes, queries will be faster. MySQL and PostgreSQL offer unique indexing options. PostgreSQL index types contain the following:

1. Hash Indexes and B-tree Indexes
2. Partial Indexes that only organize the information from the section of the table.

On the other hand, MySQL provides the below indexing options:

1. Indexes such as Primary Key, Index, Unique, and Full text are stored on B-trees.
2. Indexes stored on the R-trees, like indexes discovered on spatial data types.

9) Security

MySQL and PostgreSQL support user and group management. They also give SQL privileges to several roles. MySQL supports LDAP, PAM, and Windows services for user authentication, whereas PostgreSQL has IP-based client authentication and filtering through the PAM and Kerberos.

Conclusion

Selecting one between MySQL and PostgreSQL is problematic because, in several areas, these two databases will perform well. This blog gives an in-depth overview of these two database management systems: their advantages, performance, scalability, security, and architecture. I hope it helps you make a knowledgeable decision regarding MySQL vs PostgreSQL. If you have any queries, let us know by commenting below.