[freeside-devel] MSSQL

Ivan Kohler ivan at freeside.biz
Fri Oct 20 10:20:14 PDT 2017


On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 01:43:22AM +0000, Nathan Anderson wrote:
> 
> All of that said...
> 
> > To do that, we leverage more advanced database features over time.  In 
> > the past, we didn't use transactions or foreign keys, now we do.  In the 
> > future, we are considering making use of PostGIS.  And so on.
> > 
> > However, in contrast to MSSQL support, MySQL/MariaDB is open-source, was 
> > supported recently, could probably be supported again without intrusive 
> > changes, and could increase user/developer/customer interest in the 
> > platform.
> 
> ...I would suggest that use of PostGIS and support of MySQL are mutually
> exclusive,

> and so accepting a full-featured MySQL port would necessarily
> require you to go lowest-common-denominator in some places and thus go
> against every argument you just made in favor of not supporting MSSQL.
> :-)

No, Nathan, this isn't about absolutes, it is about weighing and 
considering options.  We're not using PostGIS at this time, that's just 
an example of a useful database feature we might use.

Just as we haven't in the past, we wouldn't let the MySQL support hold 
us back (there's many places on the code with PostgreSQL optimizations 
and MySQL workarounds), but there would be no reason not to support 
MySQL _now_, if someone wanted to contribute it.

However, there aren't any MySQL contributions at this time and I'm not 
holding my breath for any to appear, so I'm not going to spend any more 
time or brainpower considering it unless that changes.


> (I also suspect that some -- definitely nowhere near all, but some -- of
> the changes I had to make in order to support MSSQL will be needed to
> bring MySQL support back up to snuff again.

If you think so, you're welcome to break them out and submit them as 
individual patches or git pull requests for MySQL support.  I'm happy to 
discuss technically those individual changes once there are actually any 
contributions submitted.


-- 
Ivan Kohler
President and Head Geek, Freeside Internet Services, Inc.  http://freeside.biz/
Debian GNU/Linux developer  |  CPAN author  |  cat person  |  ski addict


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