On Mon, May 6, 2019 at 10:35 PM Tony Shelver <tshelver@gmail.com> wrote:
I have to agree on the geospatial (GIS) features.
I converted from SQL Server to Postgresql for our extended tracking database. The SS geospatial feature set doesn't seem nearly as robust or complete or perfoirmant as that supplied by PostGIS.
The PostGIS ecosystem of open source / 3rd party tools is also far bigger, for anything to do with mapping. Openstreetmaps.org stores their world dataset on Postgresql / PostGIS, and there a ton of mostly open source-based tools and organizations that work with it or any other PostGIS data to provide a complete GIS solution.
My first sS implementation had me backing out of storing geographic points in the relevant SQL Server datatype as the performance hit during loading was just too big. Doing the same thing in Postgresql / PostGIS is nardly noticeable.
Another feature in Postgres is that you are not restricted to just plpgsql as an internal procedural language.
I am not an expert, but it also seems far easier to create, install and work with major extensions to Postgresql than SQL Server. I found installing the GIS featureset in SS to be a bit of a pain back oin the day..
GIS is a good feature but it's a niche feature, so while I'll mention it with extensions I am looking for more general-purpose comparisons and areas where Postgres is as-good or better than SQL Server.
