Talk:Wikimedia hardware status

why not use postgresql?

The MediaWIki software was originally written for MySQL because it was clearly better than PostgreSQL at the time. At present there is ongoing development work to make the software able to use a variety of database engines and much of the work required to support PostgreSQL has been done. It's unclear whether the site would be faster or slower on PostgreSQL - some aspects, particularly the support for multiple indexes in a single query, are interesting. Once there's enough hardware for it to be practical it seems likely that there will be some effort to evaluate which of the two is better for us today. Some of that has been done by a PostgreSQL use at home but not at the sort of load Wikimedia servers have. It's entirely possible that we'll switch at some point - whether to PostgreSQL or to something else. Jamesday 20:58, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)