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In short, yes and perhaps.

Replication (master & multiple slaves) works great with Slony.

Fail over should not be done by the database, but by the operating system or an external monitoring system (Big Brother). RedHat Enterprise with the standard failover configuration works fine.

You just need to tell Slony that the new node has been elected as master. It's not as clean as it could be (no gui tools, etc.) but it is functional enough for the .org servers (Affilias).

Apologies to Ziff-Davis...

From: "Marc G. Fournier"
To: pgsql-announce ( at ) postgresql ( dot ) org
Subject: PostgreSQL 8.0.0 Officially Goes Beta
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 21:36:52 -0300 (ADT)

After almost 9 months of development, the PostgreSQL Global Development Group is proud to announce that development on PostgreSQL 8.0.0 has now finished, and is ready for some serious testing.

For those wondering about the 8.0.0 designation on this release, there have been several *very* large features included in this release that we felt warranted the jump. As with all of our releases, we aim to have this one as rock solid as possible, but *at least* one of the features added to this release involved such changes that may warrant a bit extra testing post-release before deploying it in production.

Although the list of new features in 8.0.0 is extensive, with both SMB (Win32 Native Support) and Enterprise (Nested Transactions and Point in Time Recory) features being added, there is one thing that hasn't been included as part of the core distribution, and that is a Windows Installer, which can be found at:
http://pgfoundry.org/projects/pginstaller

For a complete list of changes/improvements since 7.4.0 was released, please see:
http://developer.postgresql.org/beta-history.txt

That said, and without further ado, Beta 1 is currently available for download on all mirrors:
http://www.postgresql.org/mirrors-ftp.html

And, thanks to David Fetter, the Beta is also available via BitTorrent at:
http://bt.postgresql.org

As with all releases, the success of this release falls in the your hands ... to go from Beta -> Release, we need as many people out there to put it through her paces as possible, on as many platforms as possible. We urge anyone, and everyone, to download a copy and run her through her regression tests, and report any/all problems, and bugs, to
pgsql-bugs ( at ) postgresql ( dot ) org

The more bugs we can find, and eliminate, during Beta, the more successful the Release will be...

On behalf of all of the developers, Happy Bug Hunting ...

Apologies to Ziff-Davis...

From: "Marc G. Fournier"
To: pgsql-announce ( at ) postgresql ( dot ) org
Subject: PostgreSQL 8.0.0 Officially Goes Beta
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 21:36:52 -0300 (ADT)

After almost 9 months of development, the PostgreSQL Global Development Group is proud to announce that development on PostgreSQL 8.0.0 has now finished, and is ready for some serious testing.

For those wondering about the 8.0.0 designation on this release, there have been several *very* large features included in this release that we felt warranted the jump. As with all of our releases, we aim to have this one as rock solid as possible, but *at least* one of the features added to this release involved such changes that may warrant a bit extra testing post-release before deploying it in production.

Although the list of new features in 8.0.0 is extensive, with both SMB (Win32 Native Support) and Enterprise (Nested Transactions and Point in Time Recory) features being added, there is one thing that hasn't been included as part of the core distribution, and that is a Windows Installer, which can be found at:
http://pgfoundry.org/projects/pginstaller

For a complete list of changes/improvements since 7.4.0 was released, please see:
http://developer.postgresql.org/beta-history.txt

That said, and without further ado, Beta 1 is currently available for download on all mirrors:
http://www.postgresql.org/mirrors-ftp.html

And, thanks to David Fetter, the Beta is also available via BitTorrent at:
http://bt.postgresql.org

As with all releases, the success of this release falls in the your hands ... to go from Beta -> Release, we need as many people out there to put it through her paces as possible, on as many platforms as possible. We urge anyone, and everyone, to download a copy and run her through her regression tests, and report any/all problems, and bugs, to
pgsql-bugs ( at ) postgresql ( dot ) org

The more bugs we can find, and eliminate, during Beta, the more successful the Release will be...

On behalf of all of the developers, Happy Bug Hunting ...

Apologies to Ziff-Davis...

From: "Marc G. Fournier"
To: pgsql-announce ( at ) postgresql ( dot ) org
Subject: PostgreSQL 8.0.0 Officially Goes Beta
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 21:36:52 -0300 (ADT)

After almost 9 months of development, the PostgreSQL Global Development Group is proud to announce that development on PostgreSQL 8.0.0 has now finished, and is ready for some serious testing.

For those wondering about the 8.0.0 designation on this release, there have been several *very* large features included in this release that we felt warranted the jump. As with all of our releases, we aim to have this one as rock solid as possible, but *at least* one of the features added to this release involved such changes that may warrant a bit extra testing post-release before deploying it in production.

Although the list of new features in 8.0.0 is extensive, with both SMB (Win32 Native Support) and Enterprise (Nested Transactions and Point in Time Recory) features being added, there is one thing that hasn't been included as part of the core distribution, and that is a Windows Installer, which can be found at:
http://pgfoundry.org/projects/pginstaller

For a complete list of changes/improvements since 7.4.0 was released, please see:
http://developer.postgresql.org/beta-history.txt

That said, and without further ado, Beta 1 is currently available for download on all mirrors:
http://www.postgresql.org/mirrors-ftp.html

And, thanks to David Fetter, the Beta is also available via BitTorrent at:
http://bt.postgresql.org

As with all releases, the success of this release falls in the your hands ... to go from Beta -> Release, we need as many people out there to put it through her paces as possible, on as many platforms as possible. We urge anyone, and everyone, to download a copy and run her through her regression tests, and report any/all problems, and bugs, to
pgsql-bugs ( at ) postgresql ( dot ) org

The more bugs we can find, and eliminate, during Beta, the more successful the Release will be...

On behalf of all of the developers, Happy Bug Hunting ...

...and jump right to the beta announcement message.

Quoth the ever-helpful Wikipedia:

" Ingres was an early relational database system, created as a research project at the University of California, Berkeley starting in the early 1970s and ending in the early 1980s. The code, like that from other projects at Berkeley, was available at minimal cost under a version of the BSD license. Since the mid-1980s, Ingres had spawned a number of commercial database applications, including Sybase, SQL Server, NonStop SQL, Informix and a number of others. A follow-on project started in the mid-1980s as Postgres, leading to the development of PostgreSQL, Illustra, and later versions of Informix. By any measure, Ingres is one of the most influential modern computer research projects."

Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.

Sure. PostgreSQL for example supports PL/Perl, PL/Tcl and PL/Python. Look here.

By licensing per core instead of physical chip, they make more money.

Not if Oracle's customers defect to less expensive competitors, as you begin to recognize with your reference to BSD.

Well, pardon me, but open source databases are more than MySQL. The significant open source databases, in terms of features, not number of users, are:

• MaxDB, formerly SAP DB.
• Firebird, a fork of Interbase 6.0
• And ofcourse PostgreSQL, as others have mentioned.

...to work with AMD's 64 bit Opteron. And that was last November, so I daresay it's even better now... check it out here.

PLUG: Good tools, too!

...to work with AMD's 64 bit Opteron. And that was last November, so I daresay it's even better now... check it out here.

PLUG: Good tools, too!

Go trade your Gmail invites for a real database instead.

7.5 will contain a native windows port with no external dependencies. You can find the current binary version here.

Even though it is currently in beta it works very well. The port is now being downloaded over 2000 times a week and increasing all the time.

Although recently one of our employees demo'd a "clone" (not of all the features, but enough to show it's real) of our system ported to PostgreSQL.

It's being considered for some new (possibly lower margin, so free is good) products in the product family.

The old "pgadmin II" tool had a useful migration tool, so other than stored procedures, the upgrade from MSsqlserver to PostgreSQL is supposedly quite smooth. That tool is still available but is hard to find because the newer pgadmin III doesn't (yet) have the migration feature.

...some on PGFoundry, some still on GBorg.

PLUG: For example, there's this little SQL query analysis utility!

...some on PGFoundry, some still on GBorg.

PLUG: For example, there's this little SQL query analysis utility!

Recent SQL specs include recursive queries. Oracle implements recursive queries, but no with the standard syntax. There's a patch for postgres to implement the oracle syntax, but it won't be considered for inclusion into the core because it is rumored to be unclean (doesn't handle large rows, etc.) as well as because the postgres hackers feel that if there's a way to do it in the standard, then don't commit new implementations that differ from said standard.

See this thread for more.

..use a Relational DBMS like PostgreSQL?

> if you want a good, open-source
> relational database, PostgreSQL is a champ.

Right on. Good utilities are available for it, too!

... that I wrote - PQA - runs only from the console. I could write a Ruby/Tk or a WxWidgits GUI for it... but why bother? As it is, I can feed in all the necessary parameters at the command line and not have to click around a GUI.

At the same time, it's best to write the code in such a way that a GUI could be put on top of it... but for me, a console interface is good enough for now.

It's difficult to partner with PG as there is not a controlling company.

I'm sorry, but I just disagree on this. While there is no one company to partner with financially, there certainly is a single controlling group known as the "PostgreSQL Global Development Group" or PGDG.

Much like the Apache Group, the PGDG is the group that's the head mofos in charge. Their website is developer.postgresql.org

Much like the Apache Group, the PGDG is made up of the key developers, each sponsored in one way or another by some interested party. If HP were wanting to sponsor a developer to work on PostgreSQL, it is quite likely that they could find one or two good ones already working on it in their spare time who would be happy to stay at home and hack on it. Compare the developer mailing lists for both MySQL and PostgreSQL, and you'll find a much larger number of developers working on PostgreSQL than MySQL.

By the way, there is a seperate marketing arm, hosted on advocacy.postgresql.org which is where PostgreSQL

But claiming you need a commercial arm in order to properly partner with an Open Source project is to completely misunderstand how real open source projects get done.

It's difficult to partner with PG as there is not a controlling company.

I'm sorry, but I just disagree on this. While there is no one company to partner with financially, there certainly is a single controlling group known as the "PostgreSQL Global Development Group" or PGDG.

Much like the Apache Group, the PGDG is the group that's the head mofos in charge. Their website is developer.postgresql.org

Much like the Apache Group, the PGDG is made up of the key developers, each sponsored in one way or another by some interested party. If HP were wanting to sponsor a developer to work on PostgreSQL, it is quite likely that they could find one or two good ones already working on it in their spare time who would be happy to stay at home and hack on it. Compare the developer mailing lists for both MySQL and PostgreSQL, and you'll find a much larger number of developers working on PostgreSQL than MySQL.

By the way, there is a seperate marketing arm, hosted on advocacy.postgresql.org which is where PostgreSQL

But claiming you need a commercial arm in order to properly partner with an Open Source project is to completely misunderstand how real open source projects get done.

SELECT CHILD AS 'My Favorite Son' FROM FAMILY WHERE SEX='Male' AND YOB BETWEEN 1975 AND 1985; -- Put the right years in.

Perhaps start of with a recipe database using Ruby and PostgreSQL

Alternatively she could always learn to design knitting patterns -- It's virtually the same act anyway!

What about PostgreSQL, Inc.? Check out their support services. And their current partners list shows a relationship with redhat.

That being all said and done however, we don't recommend using the cygwin version of PostgreSQL for "Production" quality databases, nor high load levels. The cygwin emulation layer introduces a few limitations, namely the lack of being able to tune PostgreSQL to the same performance levels of a Unix system, and we're also not sure how well the data integrity features of Windows + cygwin + PostgreSQL work in the event of a system crash, hardware failure, etc.

Regarding native Windows PostgreSQL, it seems like it's going to be out 'soon' pretty much as long as I can remember. I'm sure it'll happen sometime, but I'm not holding my breath. Even when it does happen, it'll be very new to the platform.

> you are going to see more serious enterprise
> features being developed by interested 3rd
> party corporations for PostgreSQL

In my mind this is due - at least in part - to PostgreSQL being under the BSD license. It seems to make contributors less leery than other licenses.

I know that I've had significant contributions to PMD from folks who said that if it were GPL'd they wouldn't be contributing - but since it's BSD, they did.

> while I'll use Oracle for its
> scalability, performance, and corporate support.

There's probably a size/performance metric floating around here too. For database under a terabyte, PostgreSQL is probably fine.

The question then becomes - how much data will I be packing into this database? If it's only a few hundred GB or so... PostgreSQL may be sufficient. And the customer will save a lot of money... good times.

The PostgreSQL advocacy site has some case studies about its adoption. Most of them are pretty terse, but the PDF ones are more in-depth.

Does anyone have suggestions besides use MySQL?
Sure. Use PostgreSQL.

• gentoo linux
• FreeBSD
• bash
• vim
• perl
• ruby
• MySQL
• PostgreSQL
• Apache
• PHP
• links www browser
• wget
• K Desktop Environment
• Mozilla Firefox
• xchat
• gimp
• Openoffice.org

You're right, describe doesn't work. I'm too used to Oracle. (I could have sworn I typed it into psql before I posted it, but alas, I'm wrong). \d table_name does work as well. It's also possible to get the information by querying the system catalog tables, though in the last 10 minutes, I've proven to myself that your complaint is valid. This is all less than obvious to a newcomer, and finding it in the documentation is less than trivial.

If you've got access to a web server that has PHP, it's well worth it to install phpPgAdmin, which makes all this incredibly simple. PgAccess also works well, and there's a windows version as well as a linux version, and it doesn't require a webserver or PHP.

The thing that makes PostgreSQL great is every time you define a view, you never have to write it again in code! Just query the view. And every time you define a function that returns a value, you can use it in any subsequent query. And every trigger you define is there whenever you insert or update or delete a record, not just when you remember to do it correctly in your code. MySQL is great to use when you're slapping out the code to get the job done. PostgreSQL is great when you've forgotten exactly how everything works (for me, that's a couple of weeks at most) and you've got to make a change or add some functionality. Keep trying, it's not easy to learn, but it's worth the trouble!

And finally, your point about "update" is well taken. I use that feature in ADODB all the time, and it saves writing a lot of code.

It's in the documentation for the psql command line utility, which is here, which is listed in the reference section of the manual under "PostgreSQL Client Applications". This appears to be from the same source as the psql man page.

I think the postgres attitude to this is that their command line client utility for accessing databases is a discrete entity from the database product itself. I agree that it could perhaps be clearer in the main part of the documentation. psql is referenced in the tutorial, but there isn't much indication of where to find out more about it.

It's in the documentation for the psql command line utility, which is here, which is listed in the reference section of the manual under "PostgreSQL Client Applications". This appears to be from the same source as the psql man page.

I think the postgres attitude to this is that their command line client utility for accessing databases is a discrete entity from the database product itself. I agree that it could perhaps be clearer in the main part of the documentation. psql is referenced in the tutorial, but there isn't much indication of where to find out more about it.

Well, you can't beat MySQL for its cheapness facor. Let's face it, most people don't need some professional job, myself included.

By that, do you mean most people don't need more features, as in PostgreSQL and Firebird? Both are free (in fact, more free, if you consider MySQL's licensing requirements for businesses) ... and both are supported by interface layers like jdbc/odbc, as well as perl, php, and so forth ...

I love perl for what it was designed to do: process text in just about any way imaginable. I hate it for the purpose proposed here: CGI scripts.

I usually use PHP for Web pages, a mixture of PHP, Perl and Bourne shell (and whatever else is at hand) for the back end, and I wouldn't touch MySQL for a database if my life depended on it, when there are vastly superior OSS altrernatives available.

I think it does have a lot to do with the name.
MySQL, maybe it is My-Ess-Que-Ell or maybe it is My-Sequel, but Postgresql? Postgr-ehz-Que-Ell? Postgreh-Sequel, Postgray-Que-Ell?

I'm sure it was said in jest, but 30 seconds of "research" gives us the following...

From MySQL manual, "The official way to pronounce MySQL is ``My Ess Que Ell'' (not ``my sequel''), but we don't mind if you pronounce it as ``my sequel'' or in some other localized way."

From the PostgreSQL FAQ, "PostgreSQL is pronounced Post-Gres-Q-L."

MySQL is easy to install. I develop on Windows because I have to support lots of legacy products. MySQL has a windows setup exe. Download, run, it's installed. Simple, easy. It's not ACID compliant, but most people I know still thing MS Access is a Good Thing. Microsoft and McDonalds prove people don't want quality, they just want to get by easily. Ease of use wins most every time.

Windows still has 90% of the market and if it's not easy to install on those computers then how can any software program hope to achieve a large user base?

PostgreSQL does have a "windows proof of concept" that requires a Cygwin installation. It is a pain in the but to get running on Windows. There is a native port in the works, but it's basically replacing Cygwin with MingW.

If I want I can download source and tons of other libraries I can get a work in progress running which failes several of the regression tests. If it's challenging for me to do it though, there is no way I'm going to require clients to do it.

Check out the Windows Status Page

I have been dying for PostgrSQL to come out with a windows port. I've used it before and love it. I would love to port my MSSQL Server apps to it. ACID compliance is a real requirement in some applications, but in general people get by without it because most people don't even understand what it is.

the postgres origins are actually quite interesting - it's here.

I mean really, how many people out there can truely justify the cost of a full featured, robust database like MS-Sql? 10%? 5%?

How about 100%!?!? Ever hear of PostgreSQL?

ACID compliance, features that compare very nicely against MS-SQL/Oracle, foreign keys, triggers, transactions, embedded function definitions, the whole shebang.

About the only thing that it lacks (for free) is decent clustering/replication capability - and you can buy that fairly easily in the form of patches.

I've been using it for years, and it's a joy to work with!

> And in the Faq that they refuse
> to accept MySql patches

It's not that simple. It'd be a fair bit of work to port GForge to MySQL, and for what gain? PostgreSQL is fast, stable, and open source. And targeting PostgreSQL means we can write stored procedures to make hotspots faster.

I agree that abstraction layers are good, though - we've chatted on the forums a bit about the pros and cons of refactoring towards PEAR.

PostgreSQL at least uses write ahead logging, and the manual claims that it's a standard technique. See here.

I guess you're correct that the anticipatory scheduler can reduce write performance when you're waiting on fsync(), but the logic seems to be that the improved read performance will more than compensate for this (some other poster said 15 % improvement for "typical" database loads).

Uh, like most other large open source packages, yes it does!

• Python - Get the Python interpreter, base libraries from here. The default install includes the IDLE editor.
• Win32All - Windows extensions package that includes the excellent Pythonwin editor.

• wxPython - Wrapper to the cross-platform wxWindows window manager library. It's a better windowing system than the TCL/TK library that is the default Python install.
• Boa Constructor - GUI builder that uses the wxWindows library.

• Psyco - x86 runtime compiler. Transparently improves the performance of most Python code - for performance-critical apps, it's often a much better solution than a C rewrite.
• Py2Exe - Builds Python scripts into Windows executables. Perfect for distributing programs to systems that do not have Python installed. Use with Psyco for the best effect.

• PyOpenGL - Use OpenGL from within Python
• Python Image Library (PIL) - Package for easy image loading and manipulation

• PostGreSQL - Full-function SQL database. More complete and advanced than MySQL.
  
• PyGreSQL - Python bindings for the PostGreSQL database.
  

• Plone - Web applications, built on top of the Zope framework.

Greger47 said: VALUES is a table constructor; interleaving identifiers and literals only makes sense if you're inserting a single record.

I said: No, it's not. insert values (...) and insert (...) values (...) always insert a single record. values does not occur anywhere else in SQL, AFAIK.

Greger47 replied: Nope, you can insert multiple records with one statement, the syntax is: insert into foo (x,y,z) values (1,1,1), (2,2,2), (3,3,3),...

I've never seen that syntax before, and it's not allowed by the Oracle grammar or the PostgreSQL grammar.

It's added as a set of functions and operators, rather than existing in a separate language like pl/SQL. Consequently, you can use it just fine in the SELECT within PostgreSQL. E.g., to match all users with first_name being some variant of "John", you could do:

SELECT name FROM users WHERE first_name ~ '^Joh?(n|nathan)$';

The regexes have been even more supercharged as of 7.4 I believe. See here for more on it: PostgreSQL Pattern Matching

i think you'll find PostgreSQL is also pretty good value for money!

Not only does MySQL AB do development, but also clients do as well since its product is available open source. For example, some additions forthcoming in version 5 have originated with the heavy weight Ericsson. That's a long cry from hobby developers, though there are some of those as well.

If you are truly that worried about support or can't / won't handle it in house, then buy a support contract.

MySQL is a far more certain payoff than MS-SQL Server. That and it runs on many, many platforms. So you can run it on whatever OS + hardware you have in the server room today and tomorrow.

Postgresql is another option. Likewise, so is Oracle. If you're going to be looking at the same price class as MS-SQL, then get the real thing and go with Oracle.

It's still beyond me why people even bother giving MySQL the time of day when the incomparably superior Postgres is available under GPL.

Once the Postgres native Win32 port is done, then you'll probably see increased uptake. As it is, anyone who develops on Windows boxes (yes there are such people) is excluded from using Postgresql.

For example, I run a one-man non-profit during my spare time in grad school, where I develop and maintain websites for other non-profits. It lets me write off most of my computer kit purchases, and put some very interesting philanthropy work on my resume. But I'm studying Asian languages and use WinXP for its excellent language support via MS's IME. So I'm among those for whom it's just easier to use MySQL, especially since the sites I develop aren't that large or complicated.

There are also a decent lot of bloggers out there running blogs on Windows servers for whom a MySQL-based blog makes a lot of sense.

PostgreSQL? I looked at the Postgres website and the project looks almost inactive.

The URL is http://www.postgresql.org/

Hope this helps.

Meanwhile, MySQL is now doing transactions, and VIEWs are on their way in 5.1.

Is it going to have a data type for IP addresses in the next release, too?

It really, truly astounds me that MySQL has caught on as a DBMS for Internet-facing applications -- including logging, network management, and so forth -- when (at least as of the versions I've seen) it doesn't have data types or operations for IP addresses or CIDR blocks. My partner is in the middle of a CMU NetReg deployment. CMU NetReg is a MySQL-backed Perl application for allowing authenticated users to register their computers into a DHCP network. It has to store all IP addresses as integers, and do binary math in Perl, because the DBMS is too stupid to tell whether 10.128.128.52 is in 10.128.128.0/24.

(Note, I'm not talking about the internal representation of IP addresses. Obviously IP addresses are 32-bit integers. I'm talking about what you see when you do SELECT ip_addr FROM hosts and get 167870644 instead of an IP address. I'm talking about whether the database can compare IP addresses, SELECT those addresses in a netblock, and so forth. Or, as with most things MySQL, you have to implement basic data manipulation in your application because the DBMS can't be arsed.)

Meanwhile, PostgreSQL has IPv4, IPv6, netblock, and MAC address data types and built-in functions to process them. Those make it a darn sight easier to write network management programs, or any other program that needs to reason about IP addresses.