I am considering learning how to use some database software, and so far I have decided that it should be either mysql or postgresql. In considering which one to recommend, maybe you could point out which might be easier for a n00b and which one is more prominent in commercial settings. Thanks!

p.s. I do not mean for this to be a debate, but simply a recommendation for people new to database systems.

p.s.s. Perhaps you might be able to also answer how important this decision really is. Does the choice even matter at all?

it really depends what you want to get out of it... largely no, it won't really matter. mysql is more prevalent though, but historcially less focus on ASNI SQL92 standards... that's been widely improved on recently. go mysql i say, but it's not too much more than a coin toss.

I think MySQL is a little more newbie friendly, becuase it is so widely used. Plus, it's faster and you can use the wonderful PHPmyAdmin. I use it for my site, and it works for me. For a comparison (what I used as the deal breaker): http://builder.com.com/5100-6388_14-1050671.html

MySQL may be popular, but:
it has default features like February 31 being a valid date,
silently dropping data when it exceeds the spec of a field, clustering
(if the whole db fits in RAM; power-failure, memory chip fails?) ...


As far as I'm concerned: Postgres all the way. More features,
more mature, better SQL standard compliance. And no, I don't
care about benchmarks where people (a single user being on the
machine) insert lots of identical records and it's faster than
postgres. In real-life scenarios things look differently ...


Cheers,
Tink