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

Replication and load-balancing

[SpaFF]

I can't wait until PostgreSQL has these features. Once that happens Oracle will have to run and hide. Yeah I know a ton of people will reply to this saying that Postgres doesn't have nearly the feature set of Oracle and the like, but I think for 90% of people that need a fault-tolerant database the featureset of Postgres is more than enough.

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?

Great work for their niche

[mnmn]

I've been trying to learn Postgre's useage and try it on production systems. I started out with the MySQL that the developers were sarcastic about, but realized the very different applications that need databases.. Ever since, I've been delving into db3 for lower end data management (for dbase-replacement apps) and Postgresql for higher end.

I dont think its fair to compare Postgre with MySQL. Postgres developers work so hard to point at their features, but not all web backends require transactions or even subqueries. The basic Postgresql installation is a bit of a pain to get up and running with a basic database, which keeps pushing new users to MySQL, and the feature list gets repulsive there too.. But for applications like managing the .ORG tld registry, MySQL would not be preferred.

I like to think Postgre as a middle to large-scale database, with DB2 and Oracle taking the 'large' end of the spectrum and mysql,minisql and the sleepycat way of dealing with data, at the 'small' end. Mysql's niche happens to be at a sweet spot where developers seek ease, speed, simplicity and functionality with PHP, Perl, C and scripts.

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.

Re:Great work for their niche

[FroMan]

The basic Postgresql installation is a bit of a pain to get up and running with a basic database, which keeps pushing new users to MySQL, [snip]

Hmmm, even one of the developers in the article seemed to think that, which I didn't get.

For myself I found setting up postgresql to be a cinch. It was basically an initdb, if I remember right, then createdb. One of those commands needed a path for the data. Then you run pg_ctl start. Once the database was created and started you use psql to login and create users with permissions, which I'd assume has to be done on any database. Then create tables and go at it.

That was for setting up my home setup. I think I needed to edit one file to setup security for logins on remote hosts which was pretty self explaintory.

The hardest part was finding a jdbc driver, which didn't take too long. I found one that claimed to be better than the one that came with postgresql and droppped the .jar in the classpath and tada, instant database.

All said and done, just setting up and getting running probably takesless than two hours. And that was starting from emerge postgres.

Certainly its not like oracle and all enterprise like and what not, but it was sure a heck of a lot easier to setup.

Compared to mysql? I dunno, I'd rate it about as easy. I've setup mysql before, but it still didn't seem a clean a setup to me. That might just be me though.

Competition

[Enrico Pulatzo]

For guys who consider Oracle and other commerical RDBMS their competition, they sure seemed to enjoy pointing out the faults of MySQL.

In my opinion, OSS needs to be more friendly to each other. If one project lacks features, don't bash them, what's the point? Just focus on your own project, and leave other people alone, especially if they're bashing you too. So what if MySQL has a marketing department. The internet was supposed to be about exchanging ideas, not bashing other people's ideas.

What the Fuck?

[Moosbert]

I'm Peter Eisentraut, I'm quoted in this article, but I never knew I was doing an "interview".

Re:PostgreSQL to redefine databases

[mhesseltine]

Emphasis mine:

As far as MySQL goes, I have nothing against it. I grew up on Sybase and Oracle systems, so picking up PostgreSQL was easy as pie. I still haven't had enough motivation or time to pick up MySQL idiosyncracies. And I just don't see a future with MySQL or any other database like I see with PostgreSQL.

This, I think, is the key point. For those who have database experience, PostgreSQL is a fine database product. For those with no previous database experience, the power and terse nature of PostgreSQL is a hinderance.

I think that MySQL has done a better job of making an easy "starter" RDBMS. Is it the best thing on the planet? Probably not. If you start using MySQL and decide you're beating your head against the wall to do some particular thing, should you consider switching to PostgreSQL? Absolutely. Could the PostgreSQL people make it easier to start with? Sure.

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