Re: postgresql 8.0 advantages

On Feb 25, 2005, at 9:41 AM, Si Chen wrote:

> Hello.
>
> I read the PostgreSQL 8.0 "What's New" page
> (http://www.postgresql.org/docs/whatsnew) and wasn't sure whether
> version 8.0 is significantly faster, more scalability, or more stable
> than versions 7.4? I remember big speed improvements between 7.3 and
> 7.4. It seems the biggest advantage of version 8.0 is being able to
> run in Windows.
> Is that true?

I like programming in perl and the new pl/perl adds a totally new
dimension to databasing. For example, the dbi-link
(http://pgfoundry.org/projects/dbi-link/) project allows you to create
a schema within your database that mirrors another data source (any
data sources available via perl DBI). You could have an XML file
served from the web as a set of tables in one schema, a mysql database
as a second schema, and a set of csv files in a directory as a third
schema, all with views within Postgres that allow query, update,
delete, etc. Other projects such as this are likely to spring up, I
would imagine. Performance characteristics aside (which I will leave
to others to comment about), I have found the pl/perl improvements well
worth the switch.

Sean