MySQL wants to be Ikea of the database market. (via) The headline on its own is great, but MySQL and IKEA are actually pretty good parallels.
The people with $10,000 couches and $100,000 databases will always deride the cheapness, lack of certain design flourishes, and the fact that you generally have to put it together yourself. But that misses the point. It’s cheap, it does what it’s supposed to, and you can always replace it with the real thing when you start making enough to afford the name brand stuff.
Plus, for people who don’t know the benefits of the name brand stuff, we are perfectly content with our cheap knock-offs.
3 responses to “MyKea”
Unless IKEA furniture is free I think your analogy falls short. Also, MySQL is a lot more reliable than any IKEA furniture I’ve had. Perhaps Access and IKEA would be a better fit?
Just a few thoughts from someone with a taste for high priced couches and low cost databases.
Beautiful!
I get really irritated with snobs ragging on MySQL when it’s obvious they don’t understand the value of it well enough to justify their high self-opinion.
Actually, the analogy works pretty well, although possibly not in the way george intended: the cheapest Ikea furniture isn’t that great, but get the slightly more expensive stuff and it’s fairly robust; MySQL isn’t that great either, but get the slightly more “expensive” stuff (eg. PostgreSQL) and it’s fairly robust.
Fairly obvious stuff with a bit of experience, really, and no snobbery required whatsoever.