Re: Better Features document? - Mailing list pgsql-docs

Great!  You guys do it and I'll put it on the website.

Vince.


On Sun, 8 Apr 2001, Bruce Momjian wrote:

> Sounds great.
>
> I have collected some comments from people about PostgreSQL vs. other
> databases at:
>
>     ftp://candle.pha.pa.us/pub/postgresql/comparison.mbox
>
> This may help.  You can also link to the docs and my book at:
>
>     http://www.postgresql.org/docs/awbook.html
>
> to give people more detailed information about the features.  I think
> such a page would be a great idea.  I can help too.
>
> >
> > One thing that confused me when I started seriously looking at PostgreSQL
> > was the features it had relative to other competitors. We have so many
> > powerful features that are often underused by new users:
> >
> >   * procedural languages
> >   * triggers
> >   * rules
> >   * views
> >   * custom aggregate functions
> >   * ... and more
> >
> > and so on. The documentation does a good job (& gets better all the
> > time!) at explaining this, but many users never read that far into the
> > documentation, and, of course, many people never get to the documentation
> > at all -- they're evaluating software by a 10-minute glance through the
> > web site.
> >
> > We have a features document at
> >
> >    http://www.postgresql.org/features.html
> >
> > but this covers the architecture of the system (postgres / postmaster,
> > etc), and very little about some of our other competitive advantages.
> >
> > My fear is that users & potential users come to PG w/o learning what a
> > view is, how triggers can be helpful in designing database systems, why
> > custom aggregates are so great, etc. (Those of us w/CS backgrounds do well
> > to remember how many web database designers don't have that background!)
> >
> > Therefore, people compare us sometimes w/other database systems (mostly
> > MySQL simply as 'MySQL seems faster and easier to install, but PostgreSQL
> > has some features, like transactions, that may be useful to complicated
> > databases', completely missing how many PG features are important to
> > everyone that is designing databases, simple or large.
> >
> > I started writing a 'Features+' document a few months ago, but it got sat
> > aside during a busy work time. I'd like to restart that work.
> >
> > I don't want to recreate the manuals -- I envision something like a 5-page
> > 'product datasheet' that explains just enough about what a trigger is so
> > that users have no excuse for not digging into that chapter, and that
> > people understand how fantasic procedural languages are.
> >
> > Before I start digging into that, does anyone know if there
> > exists a short- or medium- length (2-5 p) document that explains, for
> > ordinary database mortals, about the sophisticated features of PG?
> >
> > Does anyone want to help put this together?
> >
> >
> > --
> > Joel Burton   <jburton@scw.org>
> > Director of Information Systems, Support Center of Washington
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> > TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to majordomo@postgresql.org
> >
>
>
>

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