Thread: PostGres and WIN32, a plea!

I had read on one of the newsgroups that there is a planned native port to
the win32 platform, is this true?  I read most of the win32 thread off of
the dev site and it was not clear if this was true.

In either case, I would like to advocate such a port to be done, and soon,
not for any altruistic reasons, but simply on behalf of myself (a windows
applications developer) and the many others who are like me.

I personally believe that Postgres has a great deal of potention in the
applications market, with the database server packaged along with the
application.  There is a great deal of need for this for medium to high end
windows applications, because there as of yet no existing Microsoft package
that can handle it.

Postgres is ideally suited for this need because of its rich server side
programming interfaces, liberal licensing, and high performance.  Mysql,
despite their sucking up to the windows crowd, fails on all three of those
counts.  However they have realized the need for a database embedded
application by allowing the mysql server to be linked directly with a
windows app (at least, on a technical level), and have talked about
providing a single user database .dll.

I believe that mysql is not well suited for these types of applications
though for stability and performance reasons.  For all the talk of speed, I
think postgres is the fastest database ever written for pc hardware, with
the one possible exception of Microsoft Foxpro (note: not written by
Microsoft).  Sql server costs to much to ship with an app, and, quite
frankly, is rather slow.

Postgres could easily springboard into a very strong niche market in
embedded applicaions.  From there, with increased awareness and developer
support on the windows side, it could start pecking at more traditional data
services currently dominated by sql server, and (yuck!) access, and their
eveil fraternal twin, visual basic.

Site note: good strategic positioning in this regard would be an XML shell
for postgres (pgxml) and a data provider for .net.

Thats my .02$.  Many great thanks to the dev team. Please don't let postgres
continue to be the software wold's best kept secret.

Merlin

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Merlin Moncure [mailto:merlin@rcsonline.com]
> Sent: 22 November 2002 21:25
> To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
> Subject: [HACKERS] PostGres and WIN32, a plea!
>
>
> I had read on one of the newsgroups that there is a planned
> native port to the win32 platform, is this true?  I read most
> of the win32 thread off of the dev site and it was not clear
> if this was true.

Hi Merlin,

This is true - the port is being actively worked on (see recent posts
from Bruce Momjian). A number of us have also been involved with the
closed source beta testing recently.

> I think postgres is the fastest
> database ever written for pc hardware, with the one possible
> exception of Microsoft Foxpro (note: not written by
> Microsoft).

Hmm, ever tried using a large multiuser database such as a finance
system using a Foxpro database? Network managers have been known to
murder for less... :-)

Regards, Dave.

Dave Page wrote:
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Merlin Moncure [mailto:merlin@rcsonline.com] 
> > Sent: 22 November 2002 21:25
> > To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
> > Subject: [HACKERS] PostGres and WIN32, a plea!
> > 
> > 
> > I had read on one of the newsgroups that there is a planned 
> > native port to the win32 platform, is this true?  I read most 
> > of the win32 thread off of the dev site and it was not clear 
> > if this was true.
> 
> Hi Merlin,
> 
> This is true - the port is being actively worked on (see recent posts
> from Bruce Momjian). A number of us have also been involved with the
> closed source beta testing recently.

Yes, I expect the 7.4 release, due in mid-2003, to have a native Win32
port.

--  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610)
359-1001+  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square,
Pennsylvania19073
 

> Site note: good strategic positioning in this regard would be an XML shell
> for postgres (pgxml) and a data provider for .net.

Just so you know, there is already a .NET provider for PostgreSQL. You can
find it on:

http://gborg.postgresql.org/

Chris

>
> Hmm, ever tried using a large multiuser database such as a finance
> system using a Foxpro database? Network managers have been known to
> murder for less... :-)
>
Hmm, I have, and you could imagine the result :)
It was a small system, really and everything was fine until I added my 10th
user.  Then my data left me like the parting of the Red Sea :).

Building a database system on lousy tehnology, only to rewrite it is
something all database admins have to go through.  I think its kind of like
coming of age.  On the unix side of things, you have mysql catching people
the same way.

FP did have a very nice query optimizer.  Also, FP views optimized the where
condition through the query, and have for quite some time (does PG do this
yet?).  I think the FP team was really on to something, till M hamstrung the
project.

FP also had the ability to write user defined functions into the query,
something I thought I would have to give up forever, until I stumbled across
PG (from the mysql docs, go figure!)


Merlin