Damian was kind enough to send this little nugget: http://sql-info.de/mysql/

It's not exactly a debunking of MySQL, but it does have a list of what it describes as "gotchas" regarding MySQL's behavior. A little explanation: the term "gotcha" is used, and not "bug" or "heinous, idiotic application flaw" because most of these "gotchas" are DOCUMENTED IN THE PRODUCT MANUALS!

It seems MySQL considers February 31st to be a valid date...valid enough that you can actually compare it to other dates without throwing an error! This is considered ACCEPTABLE, DOCUMENTED BEHAVIOR! MySQL will also alter your table definitions without warning, if there appears to be something in the definition that it cannot do. It will also accept features that it cannot implement without raising an error or even a message to notify you.

I'm particularly intrigued by this little gem:

InnoDB allows you to drop any table even though that would break the foreign key constraints which reference the table.

OK, for those of you that don't know, one of MySQL's "features" was its lack of foreign key constraints in the regular product. The developers actually posted documentation stating that foreign keys are not essential and only slow performance. As they appear to have received numerous death threats or Clockwork Orange reconditioning, they implemented the InnoDB extensions to allow for proper foreign key constraints. Great f---ing job there guys! I guess they still think they're not necessary....

Please, don't even THINK that I've ruined it for you by posting all the good ones! Go read the whole thing! Make sure you check out the links on that site too.

In all seriousness though, I used to give MySQL the benefit of the doubt and concede that it was useful for certain database applications. But after reading that site, I will gladly use Excel or Visicalc or even NotePad as database apps before MySQL. At least they do only what I tell them to do. I'm not kidding when I say dBase II and Clipper had more data integrity features.

You owe it to yourself to check that site over before you even think about hypothetically considering maybe possibly perhaps pondering the merest chance that you might one day use MySQL.

The worst part is, some day they'll add XML support to MySQL.