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As a MySQL DBA, I can tell you that neither MySQL nor Postgres are slow. MySQL has less features than Postgres and that was intentional. MySQL was supposed to be a basic feature set that serves 90%-95% of websites and has easy to set up replication. MySQL has always had more the mentality of light weight and fast. Postgres is a fine database. It has a lot of features I would like to see in MySQL. However, Postgres is still fighting issues with regular replication while MySQL is now progressing to sync/group-replication.

The features that Postgres already has can be solved in MySQL, but take some work. Sometimes they require me to use temporary tables and pre-calculated summary tables.

MySQL's speed is only variable by the queries that are run against it. MySQL is "simple enough" for developers to write queries for it and in 10%-20% of those cases, those queries could be a bit more optimal or the data model could use some more tweaking. In terms of getting things done, you can do a whole lot before needing someone like me to come along and tweak things.

A performance audit from someone like me every 6-9 months after your company's website has been in use for >3 years can be perfectly fine.

Also the main reason MySQL won out back in the 90s was because they had better documentation and answered questions on their forums faster.



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