Re: [GENERAL] Re: Is PostgreSQL ready for mission criticalapplications?

>
> So which is is guys, is this database dependable for commercial use - or is an
> academic oddity, worth watching but not using?
>

For me it depends on what you use in PostreSQL. Some basic stuff is working
really well in PostgreSQL - other parts have problems.

As I've written earlies in some postings. Our company is evaluating
PostgreSQL to get a solid database for a research project and perhaps
later for a product. We've used Adabas-D in our previous products.

We've written a PostgreSQL->Smalltalk/X wrapper, now we are developing
a oo->rdmbs framework on top of it and we've noticed the following
problems with PostgreSQL 6.5.1:

a) Due to the database layouts we are in need of doing all these nice
sql-statements like "group by" and "having" ... and as posted earlier
in this group: they're limited in PostgreSQL.

Now if you need these aggregations urgently you get many, many
problems and you have to produce work-arounds ...

And this is one reason for all problems running around: as with
all programming languages all these guys come with special SQL
knowledge (e.g. I use these statements very much ...) and now
you come to POstgreSQL and find out, that these statements are
special.

Our application relies on "groub by" and "having" due to the fact,
that we store our attributes for objects not column-wide but
row-wide. Therefore you've the need for much more complicated
SQL commands to retrieve the attribute values for one object - if
they do not work - you have really problems.

Now working two months with PostgreSQL I've to admit, that the
database works, but due to the sql limitations we consider to
drop it.

b) We had problems with vacuumdb here and there. Some times it cored.
We've deleted a 300 MB database under psql and the backend cored ...

In general it is no wonder, that some persons tell us: "we use it
with success in our multi-gigabyte database" and others have a totally
different opinion.

When considering the fact, that PostgreSQl is a free database it is
worty. Some persons are developing the database and if I
could have a wish: please, please fix all these limitations of
"groub by" and "having" statements and get closer to the sql standard.

And to mention, how different the expectations are: some persons out
there mentioned, that referential integrity would be a very urgent need
for them - I've the totally different opinion about this:

When doing procedural queries to the database, this need is ok. If you
put a full oo->rdbms wrapper on top of this database and do your
programming in some oo-languages this need vanishes - because referential
integrity does so much in the background, that your object-model in
your application simply becomes wrong - therefore I throw away
referential integrity. It makes the administration for the databases
also much more simplier.

Just my opinion .. not to be misinterpreted. I encourage every work
the people push into PostgreSQL because I want to have a free
database.

Marten