Interview with Josh Berkus of PostgreSQL

SilentBob4 writes "The PostgreSQL database project has recently released Version 8.0, which was received with quite some fanfare, mostly due to its first-ever Windows port. Mad Penguin talked with Josh Berkus, one of the core team members, to find out how 8.0 has fared since its official release on January 17, 2005. Full interview."

Comments

Re:Ever since I ran into unicode ... Pgsql has roc

[rtaylor]

All I now need is the Postgres-R (replication) stuff to work out of the box (like it does for mysql).

Look into Slony. It's an addon project, but replication for PostgreSQL will always be an addon so that it works across multiple backend versions.

It's fairly straight forward to setup a master/slave scenario, and PgAdmin is currently working on GUI tools for managing it.

Fatal Flaws

[Red Pointy Tail]

There are fatal flaws in this version of 8.0 that makes it practically unusable in Win32 for me.

Firstly, the broken Unicode support, which arose because certain collation functions doesn't work well on UTF-8 (PostGre uses UTF-8, Win32 prefers UCS-2). The tone you get from reading the bug/support forums are disdainful, pointing the problem to Win32 libraries and suggesting that it should not be in the confines of the PostGres team to fix Windows bugs. Nevertheless, if they already put so much effort to porting to Win32, it seems strange that they are adopting such a stance instead of proactively trying to fix that problem.

Secondly, there is no support for the Win1252 code page, which is very commonly used in English Windows, while mind-bogglingly, there seem to be all other code-pages from Cyrillic to Arabic. This makes migration of data from SQL Server very difficult, and using Latin-1 doesn't help when it encounters characters like `. Yes, Windows should be whacked on the bottom for introducing such shitty incompatibilities but that doesn't solve the problem. The other solution to this problem - to convert to UTF-8 instead - is unavailable because of first problem.

I have been trying to persuade my company to shift from SQL Server to PostGreSQL on Windows (for some reasons, we cannot move over to Linux yet). But after hitting these brick walls - I've giving up. Here's to hoping!

Re:Incentive to switch

[cakoose]

It seems to me that if the PostgreSQL team had leveraged their position and spent more time developing for open operating systems, businesses would be given the incentive to switch. Instead, they've chosen to accomodate the enterprise windows crowd.

This argument made its rounds a while ago. I think it was when a prominent KDE developer write about how it was a bad idea to port applications to Windows. The counter argument is that they're letting people switch to open source software a little bit at a time (which is easier). Once people are comfortable with using cross-platform applications exclusively, the Windows platform no longer has an unfair advantage. At that point, different operating systems can be judged on their own merits, instead of simply on the availability of application software.