"Matthew T. O'Connor" <matthew@zeut.net> writes:
> > I don't call porting Postgres to run well on something like 40% of the
> > world's servers (or whatever it is) "just another port".
> >
> > It could conveivably double Postgres's target audience, could attract heaps
> > of new users, new developers, new companies and put us in a better position
> > to compete with MySQL.
That's a misleading extrapolation. If people wanted to run an open source
database they could just as easily run a Solaris, Linux, or BSD server to run
it on anyways. I assure you 40% of the worlds servers will not switch from
MSSQL to Postgres the day the win32 port comes out...
The reality is it just doesn't happen that way. Postgres isn't the first major
unixy software to get ported to windows. Emacs, Gcc, Mozilla, Gimp, even X all
have windows ports. And they're not dead ports either, they have significant
user-bases. But they don't make much of a dent compared to the much larger
entrenched Unix user-base and they don't change the nature of the development
much.
> Absolutely! In addition, even if you don't consider win32 a platform to run
> production databases on, the win32 port will help developers who work from
> windows boxes, which is the certainly the most widely used desktop environment.
> My former company would have loved the win32 port for exactly this reason, even
> though most of our servers were FreeBSD / Linux.
Oh sure, it'll be useful. But it doesn't make the difference between different
classes of software. It'll still the same Postgres with the same set of things
it's capable of handling once you get it running.
If you need 24x7, scalability to n terabytes or x transactions/s, guaranteed
data integrity in the face of various failures, none of the checklist items
you'll be looking for will be win32 support. PITR will probably be a factor in
meeting any of those requirements.
In any case, my post was mostly a troll, there's not really much point in
arguing with it. They're all useful features and I hope they're all in the
next version of postgres, whatever version number it's given :)
--
greg
