Re: Win2K Questions

Please don't tinker with your email address if you're posting to lists. Grab a 
hotmail account or something.

On Thursday 07 Nov 2002 4:24 pm, SV wrote:
> How does the performance of PostgreSQL stack up to SQL Server 2000 or
> Oracle? Is it even aimed at being an enterprise level database?

Depends on usage patterns and how you build your application. There are a 
couple of oddities with workarounds: count() and max() aren't very optimised 
for example. There are plenty of people who have replaced MSSQL or Oracle 
with PG so for many people they are comparable. Don't forget some of the 
money you save on licencing can go on better hardware.

In terms of features, replication needs work and we're still waiting on nested 
transactions. An "official" replication system is due in 7.4 I think. Other 
than that the 7.x versions are very mature, the imminent 7.3 has added 
schemas and functions that can return a set of results (among other goodies)

> What is VACUUM? I have seen this mentioned in various places, saying that
> it needs to be run at times. What is it exactly, why does it need to be
> run, and is there any way to automate it's running?

There are two types of vacuuming - one recovers used space, since PG uses MVCC 
an update is equivalent to a delete and insert and deletions are just marked 
as such, without the files being compacted.
The second is analysing the tables to keep the stats up to date. This helps PG 
determine when it should use an index vs a scan.

> Lastly, where can I download an executable for Win2K so I can go ahead and
> take it for a spin? I already found the pgAdmin app for administration
> purposes, so I just need the database engine itself. Also, any tips for
> installation on 2K would be most appreciated.

Look for something called cygwin. I think you can get a binary download of it 
and postgresql. It's probably easier to run it on Linux/*BSD though - it's 
been running on unix-like systems for years.

-- 
  Richard Huxton