Re: [Fwd: PostGreSQL information]

Hello Bradley,

I'm a subscriber to the PostgreSQL General mailing list and your query was
passed here. What with time-zones etc. you may get several responses to your
query, I hope mine is useful. I've taken the liberty of CCing this reply back
to the list, in case anyone else has useful comments. Bear in mind I am just
a user of PG, although one with some experience.

1. Licencing
PostgreSQL is open-source and there are no licencing costs. Under the BSD
licence you are given a great deal of freedom to install, modify and
distribute the system.
General info on PG:
http://advocacy.postgresql.org/
Details on open-source licencing:
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/

2. Maintenance
The PostgreSQL mailing lists are (in my opinion) excellent, and there are a
number covering different topics. You can find more at:
http://www.postgresql.org/lists.html
http://archives.postgresql.org/
There is also paid support available from a number of companies and
independent consultants:
http://techdocs.postgresql.org/companies.php

3. Platform - Tru64 Unix
It appears your platform is supported:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/view.php?version=7.3&idoc=0&file=supported-platforms.html
I'm afraid I can't comment in detail on the 64-bit usage, you might have
success searching the mailing list archives at the link in section 2.

5. Connectivity
PostgreSQL supports both ODBC and JDBC.
http://gborg.postgresql.org/project/psqlodbc/projdisplay.php
http://jdbc.postgresql.org/
I use the ODBC driver regularly to access PG from Windows machines (an Access
or VB front-end).

6. Performance
Benchmarking is a tricky subject. Not only does the choice of test make a big
difference, most commercial databases don't allow comparative benchmarks to
be published.
My very unscientific feeling is that PostgreSQL is comparable to Oracle in
most cases. Where Oracle does win is that it offers more "special case"
tunings for specific application types and situations. Where PostgreSQL wins
is that you can spend some of the money saved on Oracle licences on more
hardware, which can make a huge difference, depending on the size of your
database.
Probably the best I can recommend is that you download and install PostgreSQL
and run some tests against it - nothing can beat real-world testing. If you
find some problems, there is a "performance" mailing list where you can find
help.

If you have an existing Oracle database you are trying to convert from you may
find some of the articles below useful:
http://techdocs.postgresql.org/#convertfrom

I hope this addresses your questions. If you want to know any more, I can
recommend the pgsql-general mailing list, or feel free to contact me
directly.
--
Richard Huxton