Re: PostGreSQL for a small Desktop Application - Mailing list pgsql-general

On Jun 11, 2007, at 10:44 AM, Gabriele wrote:

> I'm going to develop a medium sized business desktop client server
> application which will be deployed mostly on small sized networks and
> later eventually, hopefully, on medium sized networks.
> It will probably be developed using C#.
>
> I do need a solid DBMS wich can work with .Net framework. I do know
> PostGreSQL is a good DBMS in general (it sports most of the advanced
> DBMS features, transactions and stored procedure included) but i
> wonder if it is suited for my application.
>
> Knowledge base of my users is very low and "servers" will be standard
> class desktop computers most probably ran on Windows XP (and Vista
> later on, i suspect).
> The service should be enough lightweight to be ran on such "server"
> and I need silent installation and configuration because i can't
> expect my user to be able to configure a DBMS.
> Additionally i need a passable to good data provider to interface
> PostGreSQL with .Net which possibly provide better performance than
> ODBC (don't know if it exists and i hope it is free).
>
> Anyway performance shoudn't be a big issue, i expect low concurrency
> level (less than 10 users) and low to medium volume of rows and
> queries. If more users and more data are needed for especially big
> customer i can simply suggest bigger and dedicated server. (different
> problems will arise for the aggregated data which will feed the web
> application, but for these we will have a real server).
>
> Is PostGreSQL suited for such use? If not which alternatives are there
> to be used? When using PostGreSQL in such a way is there any
> suggestion to be followed? Links to sources which i may find
> interesting (how to make a silent install, basic hardware
> requirements, so on).

Postgresql is reasonably well suited to such use, as long as
you're prepared to spend a little effort to preconfigure it. We
ship a client-server CRM system that bundles postgresql
as part of the installation, and is mostly run by people with
little database expertise. We have users who are handling
a quarter million tickets a day some days (I'm not sure what
that translates to as transactions, but it's a lot worse than 1:1 :) ).

That's on linux/solaris rather than windows, so the details
will be different, but PG is certainly capable of running, and
running well, in that sort of situation. I've seen discussion
of bundling the postgresql windows installer to do a "silent
install", so it's probably worth searching the list archives
for that. I think there's a decent .net provider for postgresql,
but I'm a C++/Qt guy so I know nothing beyond that.

(There can certainly be business reasons to support other
databases as well as PG, but PG can handle the range
from small single-user to medium sized multi-user quite
nicely).

Cheers,
   Steve