Re: [GENERAL] New FAQ item

Hi,

What about available platforms, and some notes about porting pgsl to Windows .

(I'm watching this list, with this interest in mind).

Geraldo Lopes de Souza

Bruce Momjian wrote:

> Here is a new FAQ item that tries to answer the question of how
> PostgreSQL compares to other DBMS alternatives. Comments?
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 1.14) How does PostgreSQL compare to other DBMS's?
>
> There are several ways of measuring software: features, performance,
> reliability, support, and price.
>
> Features
> PostgreSQL has most features present in large commercial
> DBMS's, like transactions, subselects, and sophisticated
> locking. We have some features they don't have, like
> user-defined types, inheritance, rules, and multi-version
> concurrency control to reduce lock contention. We don't have
> foreign key referential integrity or outer joins, but are
> working on them for our next release.
>
> Performance
> PostgreSQL runs it two modes. Normal fsync mode flushes every
> completed transaction to disk, guaranteeing that if the OS
> crashes or looses power in the next few seconds, all your data
> is safely stored on disk. In this mode, we are slower than most
> commercial databases, partly because few of them do such
> conservative flushing to disk in their default modes. In
> no-fsync mode, we are usually faster than commercial databases,
> though in this mode, an OS crash could cause data corruption.
> We are working to provide an intermediate mode that suffers
> from less performance overhead than full fsync mode, and will
> allow data integrity within 30 seconds of an OS crash. The mode
> is select-able by the database administrator.
>
> In comparison to MySQL or leaner database systems, we are
> slower because we have transaction overhead. We are built for
> flexibility and features, not speed, though we continue to
> improve performance through profiling and source code analysis.
>
> Reliability
> We realize that a DBMS must be reliable, or it is worthless. We
> strive to release well-tested, stable code that has a minimum
> of bugs. Each release has at least one month of beta testing,
> and our release history shows that we can provide stable, solid
> releases that are ready for production use. We believe we
> compare favorably to other database software in this area.
>
> Support
> Our mailing list provides a large group of developers and users
> to help resolve any problems encountered. While we can not
> guarantee a fix, commercial DBMS's don't always supply a fix
> either. Direct access to developers, the user community,
> manuals, and the source code often make PostgreSQL support
> superior to other DBMS's. There is commercial per-incident
> support available for those who need it. (See support FAQ
> item.)
>
> Price
> We are free for all use, both commercial and non-commercial.
> You can add our code to your product with no limitations,
> except those outlined in our BSD-style license stated above.
>
> --
> Bruce Momjian | http://www.op.net/~candle
> maillist(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us | (610) 853-3000
> + If your life is a hard drive, | 830 Blythe Avenue
> + Christ can be your backup. | Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026