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You're in pretty good company from what I've seen. Much of it has to do with the greed of a the database companies.

For instance, I know of an academic institution which used an Oracle database to back a user directory which the e-mail system queried for address resolution. If they had 20,000 e-mail users, Oracle wanted them to buy a 20,000 user license.

So, a proxy was written and the licensing requirements were satisfied. It made financial sense to do so at the time but today the right answer today might just be to use PostgreSQL in a similar situation. There's a point where a company can put itself out of business.

For starters, linux, Postgresql , and ODBC or .Net Data Provider for a database with M$ connectivity. Openldap, Samba, freeradius for your authentication / vpn needs.

For starters, linux, Postgresql , and ODBC or .Net Data Provider for a database with M$ connectivity. Openldap, Samba, freeradius for your authentication / vpn needs.

For starters, linux, Postgresql , and ODBC or .Net Data Provider for a database with M$ connectivity. Openldap, Samba, freeradius for your authentication / vpn needs.

Here here! My variation of the "LAMP" acronym is Linux, Apache, Mason, PostgreSQL. Working pretty damn well for me. I've been looking at AxKit on and off for a while, but who wants to use "LAAP"? :P

Or better yet, use Wicket on Java and PostgreSQL.

I'm lucky. I know lots of really fast FTP servers with lots of high quality software on them. And best of all? It's completely free, and legal.

Mod me down for going counter to public opinion but you can still freely use your computer without sourcecode.

You are entirely correct. But the open source zealots who help give open source a bad name and strengthen Microsoft's cause would like you to believe otherwise.

This is some good trolling here - not sure why I've decided to bite anyway...

Any movement is defined, at least partially, by its fringe. This is true whether you're talking politics, (go Rush!) Religion, (go Misionaries!) or software. (go Debian!)

You can be very selective, and choose political conservatives who believe in aliens, and that the government is infecting the population with AIDS through airplane exhaust. (Google for comtrails produces this)

It would be very hard to say that conservatives are all about comtrails, aliens, and government conspiracy. Yet, some of the more vocal ones are.

Are you going to see me making a video card from sand? Come on, pal. You're being more fringe in your comments about the fringe than they were in the beginning!

OSS DOES benefit you, even if not immediately. Parent post mention that having the source for Apache doesn't help in any way. Except that it does:

1) Having the source freely available puts lots of plusses on the "supply" side of the economic scale, meaning the costs for obtaining the software will always be low.

2) Having the source freely available creates a culture of mods and patches, which make it much more likely that you'll be able to get much-needed features without having to commission your own software company.

3) Open source software can persist long after the original group or sponsor quits. Thus, we have evolution and ximian, and to a lesser extent, Mozilla. Oh, and don't forget the Firebird DBMS. How many sponsors has PostgreSQL had over the years?

Another example: Microsoft discontinuing VB 6. A stable, workhorse of a programming environment, the "upgrade" was in fact a wholy different language. Without the marketroids running the show, the OSS solution would have been a fork of the codebase, leaving enterprise users free to continue to develop and improve the VB6 codebase.

None of this is new - it's been said many times before. Oh well. You trolled, I bit. I guess you got what you wanted...

I mean, including Postgresql 7.4.7 as a badge of pride? Sure, its good and all, but if you have Firefox 1.0.4, then one would thing a leap to PG 8.0 would not be that big of a deal.

Tabbed browsing? I do believe that Opera had it first.

What's utterly innovative about Firefox that I'm missing?

MySQL? [...]

PHP? Yet another clone of MS's ASP. Yes, MS did invent that kind of server-side inline scripting. (Yes, I know they're supposed to never have invented anything. Sorry 'bout letting reality get in the way of that.)

I think it's more because people look at the name, try to figure out how to pronounce it, then give up

Why, given that this FAQ entry clearly states that it's "post-gress-cue-ell"?

No, dammit! I was right, after all!

That geek card goes BACK ON THE TABLE...

Backticks are a MySQL extension... I did some more poking...

Here's a mention of it.

My preferred database, PostgreSQL, which is frequently considered closer to ANSI SQL does not support backticks and returns an error if you attempt to use them.

It's a MySQL thing only. Since /. is hosted on a MySQL server, I guess it's right...

But my head no longer hangs, and I've re-asserted my geek card...

Ever heard of 'views'?

> about the DB which is free as in speech and as in
> bear :) can you provide name/link?

I'm not interested in starting YAFDF (Yet Another FOSS Database Flamewar) here, so I'll post links to my favourite and its chief competitor. Both have their proponents. Both are Open Source products.

"The World's Most Popular Open Source Database"

"The World's Most Advanced Open Source Database"

I know which one I use, but what matters is which works best for you.

No...
MySQL might be dual licensed under something commercial...but that's why I use this.

What I was going to say though is that although MySQL AB's license is commercial, the GPL is not inherently commercial at all...so he might be in violation of the commercial MySQL license, but he isn't in violation of the GPL. If he wants a free as in beer DB for commercial use, the answer is simple...Use Postgres as I said. I've found it simpler to work with than MySQL as well, to be honest.

If you are looking for an Oracle replacement try postgresql. Depending on what your needs are it might be better than Oracle, though if you needs are typical of what a business wants Oracle is likely better. Being open source (and more free than MySQL is, as the license is BSD) people do hack it to add weird things to their database.

There are a number of open source databases. MySQL gets the press. That does not mean it is best for your purpose, so you really should examine them all yourself.

Which is best is partially a matter of opinion. Mine is that between sqlite on the low end and postgresql on the high end there isn't much room for more general purpose SQL databases. Of course there are others, I'm not going to list them all because I'll forget at least one if I try.

...after all, the recent PostgreSQL 8.0.2 release included a cache management algorithm replacement due to a patent.

PostgreSQL not backed by a commercial group? You must be kidding. Just look at the Developer Bios page to see which companies back PostgreSQL. The core committee is employed by 6 different companies and if you look further down you will see many more. And several large contributors to the project, like Pervasive and Fujitsu which employ several full-time hackers and a support staff, aren't even in the list there.

PostgreSQL is not backed by a single commercial group, it is backed by many commercial groups. It is doing just fine that way, and will continue to do fine even if one off those backers goes belly up. That has happened before, that will happen again and exactly because there is no single controlling commercial interest group that does hardly affect the PostgreSQL development.

No. If that were true, then they would have seen far greater adoption rates. PostgreSQL has a history of difficult installations

I'll second that. Last autumn I tried to switch my phpBB-centric sites from MySQL 4.0 to PostgreSQL 7.4. After a week's efforts to get my databases converted, the results were these:

• I can tell anyone is lying who says getting PostgreSQL up and running for the first time is not harder than MySQL.
• I had found tons of URLs that used to contain tools designed for the purpose.
• I had found several Perl-tools that I wasn't able to get to produce anything more useful than several error messages. Several other tools I found that were written C or other languages were as lucky...
• ...except one simple PHP script. After some modifying and changing the allowed memory usage in php.ini to about 20-fold.
• And finally, that when I did things in things in the order of 1) installing phpBB normally, 2) deleting the contents of the created tables with phpPgAdmin and 3) importing the newly converted ex-mysqldump which had to be created by phpBB's backup database option without the table structure, I could have my sites working as read-only archives.

So, while I knew the best solution for my current and future database needs (in terms of license and features) was PostgreSQL, I wasn't able to find a way to move my sites from MySQL to PostgreSQL without sacrificing all the messages and user accounts in my forums.

Seems that the home page of mysql2psql at least has been updated since I last checked, so it could finally do what it is supposed to. It sure should if switchers from MySQL to PostgreSQL were considered welcome.

A regular vacuum does not block reads or writes. It does block changes to the table definition, so you won't be able to add, delete, or change the type of fields while it is running.

Running vacuum full or vacuum freeze do lock the table while they are running, but the need for vacuum full can be avoided by running vacuum before the free space map fills up, and vacuum freeze is only needed to prepare a read only database so that it never needs to be vacuumed again.

This is discussed in the docs here.

It looks like this has been fixed, along with some other neat features in the new 8.0 release version of postgreSQL.

I've just started playing with it...but, looks very interesting so far...

I just finished the Using and Managing mysql course in Boston. VERY much worth it btw if you're like me -- A developer and not a true DBA who supports the Database because there's noone else.

Right, why not try PostgreSQL which has had these features forever and is also Free software.

This is certainly good news for MySQL, but many open-source advocates forget about other open-source DBs like PostgreSQL, which has had these features for a while. But competition is always good, and it's good to see MySQL stepping up its value.

And, no, I don't consider shit like this to be documentation.

I wonder if the book covers the fact that if you use MySQL for commercial use and you don't release the source code you have to pay for it. Otherwise you are violating their licencing agreement Licence Agreement
I would like to see some novice user post their shopping cart code on their site so that the hacker won't even have to break a sweat trying to get into the credit card system. What the novice really needs is a PHP Postgresql book, but I don't know of one. That's because Postgresql uses the BSD licence and doesn't care what you do with it About Postgresql

I get really annoyed when I hear the "Who you gonna call?" as a response to using open source software. If I am using Window XP and something crashes do you think that calling Microsoft is going to get me a solution to my problem? Have you ever tried to call? Have you ever gotten the issue resolved right away? Have you ever gotten to talk to one of the developers who actually wrote the code of the section you are trying to fix. For the price of Oracle licenses you could probably hire a few of the core developers to work at your company, esp. if your revenues are int $1M/hour range. Also if you want commercial support you could probably call any of these companies http://techdocs.postgresql.org/companies.php
They have probably seen more of the core code of the database than anyone you will talk to at Oracle or get by hiring an Oracle consultant

...on some hefty hardware these days. This post talks about running it on a 16 CPU machine...

> Is your companies website essentially read-only page loading? If so, why not just go with MySQL.

MyISAM can't handle a database of larger than 2 gigs. Once you switch to another table backend, MySQL's vaunted performance advantage pretty much evaporates.

> Peak volume, company is making $1M/hour in sales on the web, db dies and won't come up....who you gonna call?

My DBA, assuming I'm running point-in-time recovery. That's all Oracle is going to tell you to do. The unemployment office if I'm not. Although PITR in pgsql is something of a PITA, which just might go to recommend Oracle for the time being.

See, for instance, PostgreSQL Case Studies and from the pgsql-advocacy mailing list comes some more: Finally, a list of *big* companies using PostgreSQL for *serious* projects. Why use PostgreSQL? Here's why for some examples.

See, for instance, PostgreSQL Case Studies and from the pgsql-advocacy mailing list comes some more: Finally, a list of *big* companies using PostgreSQL for *serious* projects. Why use PostgreSQL? Here's why for some examples.

See, for instance, PostgreSQL Case Studies and from the pgsql-advocacy mailing list comes some more: Finally, a list of *big* companies using PostgreSQL for *serious* projects. Why use PostgreSQL? Here's why for some examples.

All I now need is the Postgres-R (replication) stuff to work out of the box (like it does for mysql). I don't know if transaction speeds might be hit by replication or not.

From the interview:

One other question that I would like to answer is replication, because I get this question all the time: unlike some other database systems within PostgreSQL, replication is an add-in. It's a separate application. That isn't an accident. It's done on purpose.

There are several reasons for that. One is that replication is actually not a single feature. It is a set of four or five different related implementations, which serve four or five different needs. As a result, we don't want to bundle one particular kind of replication with the main database, because that's not suitable to all users. Our leading replication project, in terms of popularity, is something called Slony-I, lead by Jan Wieck, who is also on the Core Team. That has actually been quite popular as one of the leading master-slave high availability replication systems of any kind. Jan is currently working on Slony-II, which will be synchronous multi-master replication for database server clusters. Based on the pace of his past work, I would anticipate that it would be available in about a year or so. But don't look for that information in the main release notes for PostgreSQL, because it will always be a separate parallel project. [emphasis added]

In other words, just use Slony-I. From the overview:

Slony-I was born from an idea to create a replication system that was not tied to a specific version of PostgreSQL, and allowed to be started and stopped on an existing database with out the need for a dump/reload cycle.

Slony-I is a "master to multiple slaves" replication system with cascading and slave promotion. The big picture for the development of Slony-I is a master-slave system that includes all features and capabilities needed to replicate large databases to a reasonably limited number of slave systems. Slony-I is a system for data centers and backup sites, where the normal mode of operation is that all nodes are available.

See also the basic documentation. For more technical details dewnload the design document (PDF). For an excellent introduction make sure to read Introducing Slony by A. Elein Mustain on ONLamp:

Slony-I, the first iteration of the project, is an asynchronous replicator of a single master database to multiple replicas, which in turn may have cascaded replicas. It will include all features required to replicate large databases with a reasonable number of replicas. Jan has targeted Slony-I toward data centers and backup sites, implying that all nodes in the network are always available.

The master is the primary database with which the applications interact. Replicas are replications, or copies of the primary database. Since the master database is always changing, data replication is the system that enables the updates of secondary, or replica, databases as the master database updates. In synchronous replication systems, the master and the replica are consistent exact copies. The client does not receive a commit until all replicas have the transaction in question. Asynchronous replication loosens that binding and allows the replica to copy transactions from the master, rolling forward, at its own pace. The server issues a commit to the master client based on the state of the master database tra

All I now need is the Postgres-R (replication) stuff to work out of the box (like it does for mysql). I don't know if transaction speeds might be hit by replication or not.

From the interview:

One other question that I would like to answer is replication, because I get this question all the time: unlike some other database systems within PostgreSQL, replication is an add-in. It's a separate application. That isn't an accident. It's done on purpose.

There are several reasons for that. One is that replication is actually not a single feature. It is a set of four or five different related implementations, which serve four or five different needs. As a result, we don't want to bundle one particular kind of replication with the main database, because that's not suitable to all users. Our leading replication project, in terms of popularity, is something called Slony-I, lead by Jan Wieck, who is also on the Core Team. That has actually been quite popular as one of the leading master-slave high availability replication systems of any kind. Jan is currently working on Slony-II, which will be synchronous multi-master replication for database server clusters. Based on the pace of his past work, I would anticipate that it would be available in about a year or so. But don't look for that information in the main release notes for PostgreSQL, because it will always be a separate parallel project. [emphasis added]

In other words, just use Slony-I. From the overview:

Slony-I was born from an idea to create a replication system that was not tied to a specific version of PostgreSQL, and allowed to be started and stopped on an existing database with out the need for a dump/reload cycle.

Slony-I is a "master to multiple slaves" replication system with cascading and slave promotion. The big picture for the development of Slony-I is a master-slave system that includes all features and capabilities needed to replicate large databases to a reasonably limited number of slave systems. Slony-I is a system for data centers and backup sites, where the normal mode of operation is that all nodes are available.

See also the basic documentation. For more technical details dewnload the design document (PDF). For an excellent introduction make sure to read Introducing Slony by A. Elein Mustain on ONLamp:

Slony-I, the first iteration of the project, is an asynchronous replicator of a single master database to multiple replicas, which in turn may have cascaded replicas. It will include all features required to replicate large databases with a reasonable number of replicas. Jan has targeted Slony-I toward data centers and backup sites, implying that all nodes in the network are always available.

The master is the primary database with which the applications interact. Replicas are replications, or copies of the primary database. Since the master database is always changing, data replication is the system that enables the updates of secondary, or replica, databases as the master database updates. In synchronous replication systems, the master and the replica are consistent exact copies. The client does not receive a commit until all replicas have the transaction in question. Asynchronous replication loosens that binding and allows the replica to copy transactions from the master, rolling forward, at its own pace. The server issues a commit to the master client based on the state of the master database tra

All I now need is the Postgres-R (replication) stuff to work out of the box (like it does for mysql). I don't know if transaction speeds might be hit by replication or not.

From the interview:

One other question that I would like to answer is replication, because I get this question all the time: unlike some other database systems within PostgreSQL, replication is an add-in. It's a separate application. That isn't an accident. It's done on purpose.

There are several reasons for that. One is that replication is actually not a single feature. It is a set of four or five different related implementations, which serve four or five different needs. As a result, we don't want to bundle one particular kind of replication with the main database, because that's not suitable to all users. Our leading replication project, in terms of popularity, is something called Slony-I, lead by Jan Wieck, who is also on the Core Team. That has actually been quite popular as one of the leading master-slave high availability replication systems of any kind. Jan is currently working on Slony-II, which will be synchronous multi-master replication for database server clusters. Based on the pace of his past work, I would anticipate that it would be available in about a year or so. But don't look for that information in the main release notes for PostgreSQL, because it will always be a separate parallel project. [emphasis added]

In other words, just use Slony-I. From the overview:

Slony-I was born from an idea to create a replication system that was not tied to a specific version of PostgreSQL, and allowed to be started and stopped on an existing database with out the need for a dump/reload cycle.

Slony-I is a "master to multiple slaves" replication system with cascading and slave promotion. The big picture for the development of Slony-I is a master-slave system that includes all features and capabilities needed to replicate large databases to a reasonably limited number of slave systems. Slony-I is a system for data centers and backup sites, where the normal mode of operation is that all nodes are available.

See also the basic documentation. For more technical details dewnload the design document (PDF). For an excellent introduction make sure to read Introducing Slony by A. Elein Mustain on ONLamp:

Slony-I, the first iteration of the project, is an asynchronous replicator of a single master database to multiple replicas, which in turn may have cascaded replicas. It will include all features required to replicate large databases with a reasonable number of replicas. Jan has targeted Slony-I toward data centers and backup sites, implying that all nodes in the network are always available.

The master is the primary database with which the applications interact. Replicas are replications, or copies of the primary database. Since the master database is always changing, data replication is the system that enables the updates of secondary, or replica, databases as the master database updates. In synchronous replication systems, the master and the replica are consistent exact copies. The client does not receive a commit until all replicas have the transaction in question. Asynchronous replication loosens that binding and allows the replica to copy transactions from the master, rolling forward, at its own pace. The server issues a commit to the master client based on the state of the master database tra

Read from the horse's mouth: see section 2.6. I don't know about you but I think it is a pretty big flaw if a database cannot support Unicode. Note that I meant only the Win32 port - UTF-8 works fine in other ports.

The PostgreSQL 8.0 for windows installation process was very difficult and ultimately unsuccessful.

You got to be kidding right? There is a packaged Windows installer for 8.0.1, and as database installer goes, this got to be one of the most no-brainers around. It even installs the documentation, pgAdminIII and the necessary ODBC and OLE-DB drivers.

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.0/interactive/wal .html

You would know this to if you had read the PostgreSQL documentation.

RPC vulnerability from 2 years ago taken advantage of by several worms since.

Use PostgreSQL or FireBird (yes, there are Win32 versions) which don't run with elevated privileges and you won't risk a Slammer.

Microsoft first makes the software, and then nails it down after the fan sloshes to a halt. Almost everyone else makes it secure from Day One.

Per-cpu licensing has been around a long time, and has been a retarded idea a long time. Hopefully, this will spell the death-knell for per-cpu licensing.

Licensing should be per-computer. Or possibly per-user in some cases. The number of cpus/cores in your computer shouldn't drive up the cost of the license.

Oracle, MS, et. al were able to get away with per-cpu licensing as long as the only really multi-cpu machines were corporate 'big-iron' that had 8 processors. But now that cpu makers are trying to shove multiple cores into the cpu, and multi-cpu systems are gradually becoming more mainstream, it's not gonna wash. Home users will never agree to pay microsoft $1200 for licensing an 8-cpu copy of windows for their 8-core computer.

Granted, the immediate thing in question, Oracle, isn't a home-user situation, but even companies are going to get fed up with it. If Oracle gets too greedy, companies may just choose from among a few other alternatives. And if they are really smart, and as long as it can do what they need, they might choose a free software database, like PostgreSQL or the ever-popular-on-slashdot MySQL.

DB2.. .Puhleeze... Postgres is Oracle without the price or the hordes of overpriced dba's, plus it has a community of free supporters that Oracle doesn't have.

I urge everyone to use Postgres

with respect to Oracle: a tad of refactoring

This is a great day for both free software and open source movements. Hopefully Omaha will serve us well as a great example to follow and soon other banks will jump on the bandwagon. I know that I am much more likely to give my money to people who choose their software intelligently and I am sure that I am not alone. GNU/Linux and *BSD variants are certainly the best bets in such an environment. In the name of the Slashdot community, kudos for Omaha! Another question is: what RDBMs are they using for their critical data? Isn't it time for The Industry to finally move from the legacy DB2, Sybase, Oracle and Interbase, to PostgresSQL? This seems like a logical step after converting to Linux. But one step at a time. Let's be patient and hopeful.

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RETURN ($1 ~ $q$[\t\r\n\v\\]$q$);
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it seems that you forgot to tell us that the current pgsql version (in 7 series) is 7.4.7 (link) and the newest pgsql version on linuxpackages is 7.4.3 (link)

it would be really nice to see slackware include (at least in extra) the pgsql (at least the 7 series)

Is it just me ?

I really think slackware linux should include some BASIC server apps like PostgreSQL, Squid, Socks5, UnrealIRCd, etc.

do you ?

> Do we really, _really_ need another OS/Free RDBMS? What is it going to do what
> others don't?

Stored procedures & triggers?

Funny, I seem to recall using both on PostgreSQL, which I had compiled from the BSD-licensed source...

Mysql installs & runs on Windows without any third party software. (Yes, the Web really runs on Linux. I know, I know.) PostGreSQL seems to run on Windows only in emulation (via Cygwin).

This is no longer true! PostgreSQL 8.0 was recently released and one of the main feature enhancements is a Win32 Native Server

Now if only it worked with a real database...

I guess this idea of "privilege escalation" in one way or another is one of the reasons why PostgreSQL refuses to run as admin (especially on win32)