Recent major versions have provided substantial enhancements to performance, replication, JSON/document support, and observability, to name just a few.
It is never just PostgreSQL is a great database. It’s always that MySQL, Oracle, MongoDB and the hundreds of NoSQL databases are all unusable junk with no unique benefits.
MongoDB is crap.
I think the people who use Arangodb don't talk about it because they see it as a competitive advantage.
Right now I am working on an abstraction layer for document databases and using couchdb side by side with Arangodb. I guess I'll have to write a N1QL parser to go with my AQL parser.
The database I have the most fun with is SQLite. It is single-user, which means you can't log in with the SQL monitor when your program is running, but if you can accept that it's just great.
However the fact that it's owned by Oracle does make it a little bit scary, even though we have no exposure to their code or anything linked at all. I sort of wish we'd chosen Postgres instead.
Oracle has been a reasonable steward of mysql. They started making releases again. They haven't really moved it forward but I am sure they are taking care of their customers.
So far I haven't been impressed with mariadb and the other forks. For instance I would download it because I heard some hype but the installer didn't work.
This simply is not true. I personally know a bunch of engineers who worked for MySQL AB and stayed on through the Sun and then Oracle acquisitions, and worked on MySQL that entire time.
Additional source: Sun acquired MySQL AB in early 2008. MySQL 5.1 was released in late 2008, and major releases continued on a cadence of every 2 to 2.5 years to this day. You can verify this via release notes, or via Wikipedia, among other sources.
> They haven't really moved it forward
This is purely a matter of opinion. From my own perspective, as someone who has been using MySQL for 15 years, I see substantial ongoing improvement in each major release.
If MySQL was as stagnant as you claim, why would the majority of the largest internet properties continue to rely on it as their primary data store?
I used to call it CrashGreSlow back when Mysql was maintained. Postgres had a manifesto which trash-talked Oracle but it was not a reliable product at that time. Maybe the people who said it was fast were running it on ram disks with fsync turned off or something.
After mysql got bought by Sun and put on ice, postgres caught up with the hype and now it is pretty reliable. That wasn't always the case.