Interview With The PostgreSQL Team

Gentu writes "OSNews features an interview with some members of the PostgreSQL team regarding the much needed replication feature, their competition to MySQL, their future plans and a "native" Windows/.NET port."

Comments

three line summary

[PSwim]

Being an avid PostgreSQL user, I was hoping for some interesting information in this article. Silly me.

The (sadly disappointing) three line summary:

• Replication is working. Kind of. (no details)
• PostgreSQL has lots of features.
• A windows port is scheduled for this summer.

Am I the only one that things the editors should've rejected this article?

Re:three line summary

[GigsVT]

Replication is working. Kind of. (no details)

Pretty much, and it pisses me off. There are about 5 projects, all in alpha or beta. There is still no official replication, and definitely no production quality replication.

I've decided I'm just going to have to write an abstraction layer for all database operations that will implement replication.

Previously, I just did an automated dump/import every hour to the mirrored DB, which is obviously less than optimal. Also, this eventually trashed the mirrored DB (don't know why).

.NET thing is just an API bridge

[DrSkwid]

and a "native" Windows/.NET port."

er, not quite

Robert: Plus we already have a .net data provider project for connecting to PostgreSQL via .Net.

Re:.NET thing is just an API bridge

[foosnarf]

please read the article.

Josh: You have me at a bit of a disadvantage, since I'm used to comparing PostgreSQL to proprietary-commercial databases, who I regard as our "real" competition. I don't know that much about SAP-DB and Firebird beyond their literature on their websites.

The only features that we lack which some other FOSS databases have are the ones you mention in questions 1 & 2. Oh, and our native Windows version is due out this summer.

(emphasis mine)

Re:Great work for their niche

[foosnarf]

yeah, mySQL is great until you want to move your code over to another system (oracle, db2, scale scale scale). then you realize that they aren't doing you any favors with their crappy built-in types like autonumber which don't translate into anything like the sql standard and lack of query flexibility (no subselects? wtf?!).

mySQL is fine for diddly "select content from blah where id=$SOMENUM" web apps, but the syntax is seriously idiosyncratic. it's like when you program under MFC and you spend all your time on TechNet - when i have to program mySQL i write queries that i think are good and then pick through them with the online documentation until they parse. i find the syntax of postgres much more orthogonal - to go back to the autonumber example above, the equivalent datatype in postgres is the serial, which creates an integer column and a sequence object which can then be operated on just like any other objects of those types. autonumber in mySQL is some kind of ugly data type unto itself, and mySQL makes it hard to do things like manipulate the sequence.

MySQL subselects

[Wonko42]

From the interview:

"We had transaction support 10 years before MySQL, mainframe ports 2 years before MySQL, and support for all types of subselects for the last 2 years, which MySQL still doesn't have working."

What's this? MySQL 4.1, released early this month, supports subselects.

Re:MySQL subselects

[TheFuzzy]

Wonko,

You're still wrong. The quote was "ALL KINDS of subselects". This would include subselects in the SELECT, FROM, WHERE and HAVING clauses, as well as correlated subselects and sub-subselects.

MySQL supports as "sub-set" of this.

-Josh

Open-source database replication

[cpeterso]

Matt Dillon of FreeBSD fame (no, not the actor) has a new startup called Backplane. They are creating a replicated, distributed SQL database and it's open-source. It's not PostgreSQL, but it sounds like an interesting technology.