I will be reinstalling hMailServer soon, which means I can have a go at a new database. Has anyone benchmarked hMailServer with MySQL vs. PgSQL? I know that Postgres certainly has a better license, and has been known for better performance in some situations, but I have not used it before, and its administrative tools are a little less polished. (phpPgAdmin vs. phpMyAdmin springs to mind.)

What do you guys say?

http://mariadb.org/

Dropin replacement with a decent license.

Interesting, I assume that by "drop-in replacement" that means I can use the same installation of phpMyAdmin and other administrative tools to manage it? What about its performance vs. either MySQL or PostgreSQL?

It's created by the same people that made MySQL. They created Maria when Oracle took over Sun and everyone jumped ship as they were being arses. It should work exactly the same what MySQL does now so MySQL tools should work on it too.

I haven't had chance to try it out myself I have been meaning to test it though.

As a former database administrator, I would often get this question from friends and colleagues. And I would stay in the middle and say that both are excellent products boasting of unique sets of strength and it boils down to your preference.

In terms of progress though, Mysql has been a little more advance being able to present various table types that support transactions and foreign keys. However, some of the configurations are a little too complex for some to bear.