Eight Sound Reasons Not to Use MySQL

In the time I've served managing a technical consulting firm, I've heard my share of excuses for not using MySQL. While many of these reasons were based on misconception, there are a number of sound reasons not to use MySQL. These will, of course, vary from one situation to the next, but in each context, I suggest that rather than rely on the opinion of a jaded database administrator (DBA), the rejection of any database technology should stick to the legitimate reasons. To that end, in this article I outline eight sound reasons not to use MySQL.

First, the reasons not to use a given technology are not of the same nature as the reasons to use it. Often the reasons to avoid something are more compelling. We might need several reasons to actually use the technology, but it may take just one to stop us in our tracks. The selection of software is one such decision; a single reason is almost never adequate to trigger an affirmative decision, but a single strong negative overrules a dozen good positive factors.

While there is a long list of relational database management systems (RDBMSes) from which to choose, I restrict comparisons to a few of the most common. Many technical comparisons exist, although comprehensive recent ones are fewer in number. Here we concern ourselves with the "big-picture" reasons.