Horton

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  1. Why PostgreSQL is better than other commerial softwares?

    Albert Chen <chen6178@hotmail.com> — 1998-12-17T01:03:52Z

    Hi,

I'm using FreeBSD and PostgreSQL 6.4. I tell my advisor
to try PostgreSQL, but he said:"Why PostgreSQL is better 
than other commercial softwares? If you could give me
ten reasons, and I will give it a try."
Would anyone tell me what's reason you like Postgres.
Because it's free, powerful and have others, thanks.

-Albert.

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  2. Re: [GENERAL] Why PostgreSQL is better than other commerial softwares?

    Clark C. Evans <clark.evans@manhattanproject.com> — 1998-12-17T09:21:56Z

    Albert Chen wrote:

> I tell my advisor to try PostgreSQL, but he said:
> "Why PostgreSQL is better than other commercial softwares? 
> If you could give me ten reasons, and I will give it a try."

I'll give you one reason:

   Equal access to the source code.

This allows you to better learn from it
and also allows you to help debug it.  I've 
been a professional Oracle programmer
for almost 6 years now.  I'm moving to 
PostgreSQL....   When I have a problem
with this database, I can pull out the
code and fix it, extend it, etc.

When I have a problem with Oracle, 
I have to pay thousands in "support" 
charges (you can't afford to go production
without being on a silver or gold support
plan...) for me to help them solve their
problem .. without the benifit of the 
source code. *sigh*  Then when we are done,
they implement the suggestions I gave them
and sell the improvements back to me!!
No more.  I've had it.  

You don't need 10 reasons.  Independence
is the only reason any reasonable person
requires.

Good luck,

:) Clark

  3. Re: [GENERAL] Why PostgreSQL is better than other commerial softwares?

    Bruce Momjian <maillist@candle.pha.pa.us> — 1998-12-17T16:10:22Z

    > Hi,
> 
> I'm using FreeBSD and PostgreSQL 6.4. I tell my advisor
> to try PostgreSQL, but he said:"Why PostgreSQL is better 
> than other commercial softwares? If you could give me
> ten reasons, and I will give it a try."
> Would anyone tell me what's reason you like Postgres.
> Because it's free, powerful and have others, thanks.

I'll take a crack at it:

	Object-relational
	User-etensible
	Interfaces to many languages
	Nice client tools like psql and pgaccess
	Full source code
	Quick mailing list support
	Learn internals of database engine
	Frequent upgrades
	Support for many platforms
	Free
	

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle
  maillist@candle.pha.pa.us            |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

  4. Re: [GENERAL] Why PostgreSQL is better than other commerial softwares?

    Howie <caffeine@toodarkpark.org> — 1998-12-17T16:29:13Z

    On Thu, 17 Dec 1998, Albert Chen wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm using FreeBSD and PostgreSQL 6.4. I tell my advisor
> to try PostgreSQL, but he said:"Why PostgreSQL is better 
> than other commercial softwares? If you could give me
> ten reasons, and I will give it a try."
> Would anyone tell me what's reason you like Postgres.
> Because it's free, powerful and have others, thanks.

i wouldnt say one thing is 'better' than the other.  it all comes down to
what you need done.

postgresql's pros:
	* highly user extensible
	* free source code ( a huge plus )
	* easy to work with
	* lots of opensource software supporting it

oracle's pros:
	* established company. sql is what they do.  period.
	* supports damn near any SQL you can throw at it
	* fairly quick, even on HUGE databases ( terabytes )

oracle has some nice tools available, as does postgres.  the difference is
that postgres' tools are normally opensource/free whereas you pay,
sometimes pay big bucks, for oracle's.

---
Howie <caffeine@toodarkpark.org>   URL: http://www.toodarkpark.org    
        "Oh my god, they killed init!  YOU BASTARDS!"

  5. Re: [GENERAL] Why PostgreSQL is better than other commerial softwares?

    Hal Snyder <hal@enteract.com> — 1998-12-17T17:10:04Z

    "Albert Chen" <chen6178@hotmail.com> writes:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm using FreeBSD and PostgreSQL 6.4. I tell my advisor
> to try PostgreSQL, but he said:"Why PostgreSQL is better 
> than other commercial softwares? If you could give me
> ten reasons, and I will give it a try."
> Would anyone tell me what's reason you like Postgres.
> Because it's free, powerful and have others, thanks.
> 
> -Albert.
> 
> ______________________________________________________
> Get Your Private, Free Email at [commercial deleted]

This reminds me of a recent offering on questions@freebsd.org: 

"Albert Chen" writes:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm currenlty using FreeBSD. My advisor prefers WinNT,
> I telled him to try FreeBSD, but he asked me: 
> "Why FreeBSD is better than WinNT? give me ten reasons
> and I will try it?" I don't know how to answer,
> would anyone tell me, thanks.

As webmaster for PostgreSQL, I'll skip a few steps on the thread and
say that good answers will be added to the FAQ.

Where will Albert strike next? :-0

  6. Re: [GENERAL] Why PostgreSQL is better than other commerial softwares?

    Gregory Maxwell <greg@z.ml.org> — 1998-12-17T19:59:23Z

    On Thu, 17 Dec 1998, Bruce Momjian wrote:

> 	Quick mailing list support

except they cant tell me why a Dump/Restore from 6.3>6.4 wont work fore
some people. :)

/*Pardon my typing: Just switched to dvorak*/

  7. Re: [GENERAL] Why PostgreSQL is better than other commerial softwares?

    Bruce Momjian <maillist@candle.pha.pa.us> — 1998-12-17T20:04:28Z

    > On Thu, 17 Dec 1998, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> 
> > 	Quick mailing list support
> 
> except they cant tell me why a Dump/Restore from 6.3>6.4 wont work fore
> some people. :)

Often quick mailing list support?

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle
  maillist@candle.pha.pa.us            |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

  8. Re: [GENERAL] Why PostgreSQL is better than other commerial softwares?

    Anton de Wet <adw@obsidian.co.za> — 1998-12-18T08:57:55Z

    > > On Thu, 17 Dec 1998, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > 
> > > 	Quick mailing list support
> > 
> > except they cant tell me why a Dump/Restore from 6.3>6.4 wont work fore
> > some people. :)
> 
> Often quick mailing list support?

:-)

While on the subject I finally found the solution to a problem I (and one
or two other people) posted about without answer. (So sometimes it's slow
mailing list support).

In importing about 5 million records (which I copy in blocks of 10000) the
copy became linearly slower. After a friend RTFM and refered me, I used
the -F switch (passed by the postmaster to the backend processes) and the
time became linear and a LOT shorter. Import time for the 5000000 records
now the same (or maybe even slightly faster, I didn't accurately time
them) as importing the data into oracle on the same machine.

Anton

  9. Re: [GENERAL] Why PostgreSQL is better than other commerial softwares?

    Vadim Mikheev <vadim@krs.ru> — 1998-12-18T09:41:40Z

    Anton de Wet wrote:
> 
> >
> > Often quick mailing list support?
> 
> :-)
> 
> While on the subject I finally found the solution to a problem I (and one
> or two other people) posted about without answer. (So sometimes it's slow
> mailing list support).
> 
> In importing about 5 million records (which I copy in blocks of 10000) the
> copy became linearly slower. After a friend RTFM and refered me, I used
> the -F switch (passed by the postmaster to the backend processes) and the
> time became linear and a LOT shorter. Import time for the 5000000 records
> now the same (or maybe even slightly faster, I didn't accurately time
> them) as importing the data into oracle on the same machine.

"While on the subject..." -:)

This is the problem of buffer manager, known for very long time:
when copy eats all buffers, manager begins write/fsync each
durty buffer to free buffer for new data. All updated relations
should be fsynced _once_ @ transaction commit. You would get
the same results without -F...
I still have no time to implement this -:(

Vadim