Re: Rejecting weak passwords

On 10/16/2009 11:28 AM, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Dave Page wrote:
>    
>> Too many of those caveats, and it's easy to see how we can be
>> discounted early in the evaluation phase. It's not helped that often
>> these lists will be drawn up by people used to working with the
>> commercial DBMSs, so we probably wouldn't get extra points for having
>> a dozen procedural languages, or other features that are largely
>> unique to PostgreSQL, no matter how cool and useful they are.
>>      
> Yep, this is illustrating something that is pretty basic to open source
> --- that is open source often provides the tools for a solution, rather
> than a complete solution.  I often think of open source as providing a
> calculator with wires sticking out, rather than calculator buttons;  the
> wires allow more flexibility, but they are harder to use.
>    

Although often true - I think this is selling PostgreSQL a little short. 
It is a self-contained solution for what it does best, and for those 
that need more - there are better frameworks designed to be integrated 
that PostgreSQL is able to integrate with. PostgreSQL isn't a calculator 
with wires - if anything, I think PostgreSQL is an easy-to-use full 
functioned calculator whereas Oracle might be some advanced HP 
calculator that requires special training to learn how to use right... :-)

> Personally I think the calculator/wires approach is better from an
> engineering perspective, but it can be a handicap in the user experience
> and checkbox categories --- ease of use is perhaps not our strong point.
> Much of our open source value is being different, in both cost,
> reliability, and configurability.

I found this true of a lot of tools. I still remember when the mutt 
developers argued against putting IMAP in their solution because they 
thought there might be a better "IMAP component" client out there. 
Eventually, such arguments are dropped, as the practical sense on the 
matter says that tight integration is a requirement.

I don't see how PostgreSQL has really failed in this regard. Maybe 
Oracle comes out-of-box with more features - but this doesn't make it 
necessarily a more "complete" solution - it just means it has more bells 
and whistles. A bicycle doesn't need a ticking card mounted through the 
spokes for it to be considered a "complete solution". :-) Somebody might 
one day want that "feature" - but it's extra - it's not core.

Cheers,
mark

-- 
Mark Mielke<mark@mielke.cc>