Re: Firebird and PostgreSQL at the DB Corral. - Mailing list pgsql-general

Paul Ganainm wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Following up on another thread, here is a comparison between FB and PG
> from an FB'ers POV. BTW, FB is the love-child of Open-Source-Interbase.

I would love to have this comparison in a table form and posted on web. Let FB
guys chip in and make it more correct..

> The architectures of the databases are fundamentally the same MVCC for
> you, MGA for us Firebirders (Multi Generational Architecture).

And postgresql has vacuum and FB has automatic sweeps, correct?

>From an Open-Source-Interbase/Firebird point of view there are several
> issues where PostgreSQL falls down.
>
> Ease of use (particularly on Windows). FB is about as easy as installing
> Minesweeper.

Native Postgresql on windows is practially non-exsitent so if you want to
compare ease of use, let's talk unix where postgresql is fairly easy to use..


> I'm not sure exactly where I stand here, but FB has been moved to C++,
> whereas AFAIK, PostgreSQL is still in C - this is probably a religious
> war (and beyond me), but I just thought that I'd mention it.

Let's skip it. It is legacy..

>>Legendary reliability and stability
> Ditto for FB. Although there are reports of corruption from time to
> time, it is generally because the "server" was actually some end-user's
> PC.

Can that be termed as data corruption due to fault in database server is rare.

we should not attribute data corruption due to hardware failure to database
software. Postgresql ranks very high on that regard. Except for WAL corruption
bug fixed in 7.3.3, there has been no such bug till date(and even for long time)
IIRC..

>>Extensible
> Ditto for FB. If you want to extend the code, though, you have to give
> those changes back to the community - the licence is more GPL than BSD.

Postgresql is extensible from an applications POV. Data types, operators,
functions, languages, rules, domains and checks etc.

How much of it FB supports?

  >>Cross platform
>
>
> FB supports approx. 10 major platforms - not quite as many as PG, but
> still enough to be getting on with.

Practiaclly postgresql supports one platform. Unix..:-) Rest is marketing speak.
I am not discounting support matrix but I think this is fair to start a database
comparison.

Windows port in works. That will truely be another platform..

>>ANSI SQL compliant
> X

Be careful.. You need to list SQL version as well..

>>Native interfaces for ODBC, JDBC, C, C++, PHP, Perl, TCL, ECPG,
>>Python, and Ruby
> X caveat: I think that FB works natively with the vast majority of these
> and has its own interfaces as well, but not ECPG obviously.

Does it support writing stored procedures in any of these?..

>>Rules
> ? I don't understand these - can somebody explain exactly what they are?

This is answered already but I will take another shot. Rules allow you to
redirect/add to action of an SQL statement. Check
http://developer.postgresql.org/docs/postgres/rules.html

>>Views
> X (FB's are updateable to boot!)

You can do that in postgresql bu postgresql won't do it for you. You have to due
the legwork..

>>Hot stand-by (commercial solutions)
> ? (not sure what is meant by this)

Your database machine/service fails and it is automatically switched over to
another database machine/servie without interruption in application availability..

You didn't cover one thing. The on disk layout. AFAIK, FB uses one database per
file which makes it hard to support division of data physically. Postgresql has
much better disk organisation IMHO..

Good to have such comparison. Let's hope to get a compiled version on web for
masses to see..

  Shridhar