Has anybody had any experience using either mySQL or postgreSQL?

Question

I am currently looking at a project requiring database integration and in addition to the usual suspects (Oracle, SQL Server) I am also interested in mySQL and postgreSQL. Advantages? Disadvantages? Has anybody used these with LV--especially to store BLOBS?
Mike...
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Answer 1

Mike,
Here are the main differences...
MySQL is licensed under the GPL, but for about $400 you can buy a comercial license.
PostgreSQL is licensed under the BDS, which means you don't ever have to pay to use it.
Both have ODBC drivers (myODBC and psqlODBC), so talking to them from LabVIEW is a no-brainer.
PostgreSQL has more features like store proceedures and subqueries, so if you have complex data processing, you can handle them on the server side.
MySQL has fewer features and is probably simpler to administer, but I _think_ that the next version might have subquery capabilities. It's also faster for simple commands.
As far as BLOBs are concerned, here's what I dug up:
In Postgres, Large Objects are very special beasties. You need
to create them using lo_create function and store the result of the function - OID - in a regular table. Later you can manipulate the LOB using the OID and other functions - lo_read/lo_write, etc. Large object support is broken in Postgres - pg_dump cannot dump LOBs; you need to develop your own backup mechanism. Tthe team is working on implementing large rows; this will replace current LOB support.
In MySQL, text and binary LOBs are just fields in the table. Nothing special - just INSERT, UPDATE, SELECT and DELETE it the way you like. There are some limitations on indexing and applying functions to these fields.
I hope this is enough to get you started. I suggest you STFW (Search the Fine Web). You will get many results from "MySQL vs PostgreSQL".
Here are a couple that I found.
http://phd.pp.ru/Software/SQL/PostgreSQL-vs-MySQL.html
http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/2001/09/jepson/