Re: [GENERAL] New FAQ item - Mailing list pgsql-general

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@candle.pha.pa.us            |  (610) 853-3000
>   +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
>   +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026