Thread

1. questions on features

   pierre@desertmoon.com — 1999-02-22T14:46:44Z

   All,
     I've just about convinced a friend to rip out an old DB->Web system at their
     company and replace it with a linux solution running php and postgres. There
     are some issues however. They are running oracle 7.3 on a non-y2k 
     compliant AIX box, with a non y2k complient front-end cgi. As they are used to
     oracle they had some questions about the features of postgres.
   
     1) Does postgres support formatting of columns, say in monetary format. That
       is using a select, have postgres format the value of the column in dollars,
       ect.
   
     2) Does postgres support the || feature in selectes. That is having a select
     look like: select a || '-' || b from fubar; to get output that looks like
     1-2
     2-3
     3-4
     ect...
   
     3) When will postgres support: select count(distinct(*)) from fubar; ? I
     would guess this falls into sub-selects?
   
     4) Are there any better clients than psql? The psql client is very
     unforgiving in that if you mis-type a piece of sql, you cannot tell
     psql to abort the current expression.(At least not that I'm aware of)
   
     5) What about a report generator, does postgres have one?
   
     Thanks for your help!
   
     -=pierre
   
   

2. Re: [SQL] questions on features

   Bruce Momjian <maillist@candle.pha.pa.us> — 1999-02-22T19:27:16Z

   > All,
   >   I've just about convinced a friend to rip out an old DB->Web system at their
   >   company and replace it with a linux solution running php and postgres. There
   >   are some issues however. They are running oracle 7.3 on a non-y2k 
   >   compliant AIX box, with a non y2k complient front-end cgi. As they are used to
   >   oracle they had some questions about the features of postgres.
   > 
   >   1) Does postgres support formatting of columns, say in monetary format. That
   >     is using a select, have postgres format the value of the column in dollars,
   >     ect.
   
   Yes, define it as money.  Even supports foreign stuff, I think.
   
   > 
   >   2) Does postgres support the || feature in selectes. That is having a select
   >   look like: select a || '-' || b from fubar; to get output that looks like
   >   1-2
   >   2-3
   >   3-4
   >   ect...
   
   Yes, but you have to use parens if you use more than one ||.  This is
   because of the type-extensibility features.
   
   select (a || b) || c.
   
   > 
   >   3) When will postgres support: select count(distinct(*)) from fubar; ? I
   >   would guess this falls into sub-selects?
   
   Not sure.
   
   > 
   >   4) Are there any better clients than psql? The psql client is very
   >   unforgiving in that if you mis-type a piece of sql, you cannot tell
   >   psql to abort the current expression.(At least not that I'm aware of)
   
   Everyone I heard loves psql.  \e lets you edit the query, or up-arrow.
   
   > 
   >   5) What about a report generator, does postgres have one?
   
   Not sure, but I have heard of some.
   
   -- 
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