Re: Noobie Questions...

On Wed, 28 Aug 2002, Dan Ostrowski wrote:

> Hello. I am a self taught PHP programmer looking to start using PostgreSQL
> because It seems to have a more useful feature set than MySQL, and I am
> starting on some VERY large projects. Also i like the sound of PL/Perl
> since I am familiar with Perl.
>
> I have a lot to learn in a short amount of time... ( so it will be just
> like everything else *grin* ).. So I had a few questions:
>
> 1) I have heard some bad things about the dump function in PostgreSQL. Is
> there an alternative and how do the backup options available stack up?

Read all the docs at www.postgresql.org

Read the sections on administration. Postgresql is much more powerful
than MySQL, but with that greater power comes greater responsibility (i.e.
postgresql will NOT just run without some kind of daily maintenance
scheduled to keep it happy)

Read the sections on how to tune your queries and such.

> 2) Where would YOU go, if you had to, to find out exactly what kind of
> ANSI standards might be implemented in SQL 92? Specifically I have written
> a lot of php Object files that use SQL queries, but they are mostly for
> use on MySQL. I have a PostgreSQL database abstraction layer WRITTEN, but
> I just need to know what kind of things I can throw at it, if you follow
> me? In other words, I need to figure out what stuff will cross over from
> MySQL to PostgreSQL as far as SQL syntax goes. Any links?

Postgresql in general has a fairly good implementation of SQL92. The only
feature that I can think of that is ANSI SQL that MySQL has that
postgresql doesn't (yet) is "alter table drop column".

There are tons of little featurettes that MySQL has that you won't find in
Postgresql, but these are NOT ANSI SQL, but extensions that MySQL only
has.

My last advice is to look at other people's code, you'll find a lot of it
out there, at places like devshed and phpbuilder.