Top 10? Top 20? Because I did a quick count a while
back and found
at least six of the top ten used MySQL in some capacity. And two of
the remaining four were owned by Microsoft. :) I'm no DBA, but
that suggests to me that MySQL is pretty suitable for large websites,
compared to the competition.
I don't think anyone is saying that MySQL is not suitable for large
websites. However, the reasons why top websites (and non-top websites)
are using a particular piece of technology is usually far more complex
an answer than "best technology" or even "good technology". Exhibit A:
IIS.
So I'm curious about this, actually. You'd
think sites like Google
and Yahoo! would be smart enough and have enough resources to use the
best tools available.
They do. Google ditched all existing database and built their own system
to handle their main stock and trade. For some things, they use MySQL,
albeit a modified one.
Yahoo uses PostgreSQL (again, a heavily modified one):
http://www.informationweek.co/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207801579
Keep in mind if popularity alone was a good criteria, we'd all be
<strike>happily</strike> using Windows on our desktops. If all that
mattered was technical superiority, we'd be running BeOS. :)
Frankly, the choice of using PHP as the language for MediaWiki has
probably caused more problems over the years than the choice of database
backend. :)
--
Greg Sabino Mullane greg(a)endpoint.com
End Point Corporation
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8