[Fwd: SGVLLUG Oracle and Informix on Linux]

browse: <http://www.msnbc.com/news/181503.asp&gt;. Thanks
to Greg Smith <greg@zoot.zzz.iipo.gtegs.com> for forwarding.

After shying away from the Linux platform for several months,
Informix Corp. will do an about face at its international users
conference in Seattle this week. Archrival Oracle Corp. is
expected to put its stamp on approval on Linux this week as
well, by announcing plans to do a Linux port of its Oracle
database, according to sources.

Ooh. We're getting some serious company. Wonder if they'll be able to
catch up with Postgres :)

Ingres II is going to release on Linux too. So now we have Informix,
Oracle, and Ingres to compete with. Yikes.

-- 
Bruce Momjian                          |  830 Blythe Avenue
maillist@candle.pha.pa.us              |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  (610) 353-9879(w)
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  (610) 853-3000(h)

On Tue, 21 Jul 1998, Bruce Momjian wrote:

browse: <http://www.msnbc.com/news/181503.asp&gt;. Thanks
to Greg Smith <greg@zoot.zzz.iipo.gtegs.com> for forwarding.

After shying away from the Linux platform for several months,
Informix Corp. will do an about face at its international users
conference in Seattle this week. Archrival Oracle Corp. is
expected to put its stamp on approval on Linux this week as
well, by announcing plans to do a Linux port of its Oracle
database, according to sources.

Ooh. We're getting some serious company. Wonder if they'll be able to
catch up with Postgres :)

Ingres II is going to release on Linux too. So now we have Informix,
Oracle, and Ingres to compete with. Yikes.

Compete with? They are all releasing free versions for Linux, vs
the 10's of thousands of dollars they cost for the other operating
systems? :)

On Tue, 21 Jul 1998, Bruce Momjian wrote:

browse: <http://www.msnbc.com/news/181503.asp&gt;. Thanks
to Greg Smith <greg@zoot.zzz.iipo.gtegs.com> for forwarding.

After shying away from the Linux platform for several months,
Informix Corp. will do an about face at its international users
conference in Seattle this week. Archrival Oracle Corp. is
expected to put its stamp on approval on Linux this week as
well, by announcing plans to do a Linux port of its Oracle
database, according to sources.

Ooh. We're getting some serious company. Wonder if they'll be able to
catch up with Postgres :)

Ingres II is going to release on Linux too. So now we have Informix,
Oracle, and Ingres to compete with. Yikes.

Compete with? They are all releasing free versions for Linux, vs
the 10's of thousands of dollars they cost for the other operating
systems? :)

[Informix, Oracle, and Ingres will be releasing versions of their
database engines under Linux in the future.]

OK, let's discuss this. How does this affect us? With all three
releasing around the same time, they really dilute themselves. I can't
imagine most people trying more than one of the commercial alternatives.

Certain people will be tempted by a commercial SQL server, while others
will prefer us because of:

features
installed base
open source
support
price(some are free)

Is there anything we need to do to prevent loss of user base?

Also, I was reading a thread on comp.databases that was discussing free
database alternatives, and no one had mentioned PostgreSQL. We need
people to spread the word about PostgreSQL in all the forums they
frequent. Just point them to www.postgresql.org, and they can look at
it themselves. If they have heard of it, but don't use it, please tell
us why so we can clearly address those issues. We need people to get
more involved in promoting us.

-- 
Bruce Momjian                          |  830 Blythe Avenue
maillist@candle.pha.pa.us              |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  (610) 353-9879(w)
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  (610) 853-3000(h)

OK, let's discuss this. How does this affect us? With all three
releasing around the same time, they really dilute themselves. I can't
imagine most people trying more than one of the commercial alternatives.

I offer myself up as a case study...

I will likely use Oracle (or one of the other two) for some things, and
PostgreSQL for other things. Where expense is the key issue for a
customer, PostgreSQL. Where cost is less of a factor, Oracle.

I say this with these (mostly uninformed) assumptions in mind. Oracle's
ODBC driver is probably more complete. Oracle is better documented. Oracle
has a lot of related tools. Oracle offers training.

Certain people will be tempted by a commercial SQL server, while others
will prefer us because of:

features

As many posts I see to this list are "how do I do this" - "not
implemented, wait for a later version", I'm not sure why you would make
this claim. Again, I'm not a person who spends a great deal of time on
databases and I do consider myself uninformed.

installed base

PostgreSQL coming preinstalled with RedHat Linux 5.1 was the sole reason I
selected it. It was just too convenient.

open source

While I can appreciate this, it is not a requirement. Without a background
in database related knowledge, I would probably do more harm than good in
the short term, and no time for a long term investment in changes.

support

The mailing lists are nice. I appreciate them very much. There's probably
a mailing list for Oracle. What more is there for support?

price(some are free)

This is the significant advantage of PostgreSQL to me.

Bruce Tong | Got me an office; I'm there late at night.
Systems Programmer | Just send me e-mail, maybe I'll write.
Electronic Vision / FITNE |
zztong@laxmi.ev.net | -- Joe Walsh for the 21st Century

Bruce Momjian <maillist@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

| OK, let's discuss this. How does this affect us? [...]
| Certain people will be tempted by a commercial SQL server, while others
| will prefer us because of:
|
| features

Sorry, but I just don't buy this at the moment, for several reasons.

Don't get me wrong. I like PostgreSQL, and think it could *eventually* kick
butt, but (as always, IMHO) it's Not Ready for Prime Time yet, not by a long
shot. Let's look at some of the most problematic issues at the moment:

* No foreign keys.

This is a real kicker for a lot of people. Foreign keys are a big data
integrity issue. Fortunately, you can get around these with triggers,
but:

* No SQL-based triggers.

Triggers have to be written in C, and this is a big showstopper for a
lot of people.

* No OUTER JOIN (left or right).

Yes, you can simulate some of these with various UNION operators, but
it's definitely off the SQL mainstream.

* 32-bit OIDs.

This pretty much takes PostgreSQL out of the running for large database
projects.

* Hard-to-grok source code.

Open source is great, but PostgreSQL source code still has great swaths
of uncommented stretches of code, and that makes it much more difficult
to do things like add esoteric types, or even extend the functionality
of existing types. I recognize that most of this is because it's still
an amalgam of Postgres with the new stuff, but for PostgreSQL source to
be a "selling point" of the software, it has to make the job of adding
types and functionality *much* easier rather than merely possible.

There are a wide array of other issues, too; the simplistic security, view
limitations, administrational problems (eventually, for example, vacuum should
be unnecessary), analysis issues, replication issues, cross-server database
issues, index limitations, the lack of a good front end designer, the lack of a
good report designer, locking issues, and so on.

As I said, I like PostgreSQL. It could eventually be a serious competitor to
Oracle. I'd love to see it do so. But this news of commercial competitors
will certainly eat away at a good portion of PostgreSQL's commercial customers,
and I can't see PostgreSQL reversing that trend unless 6.5 is a major leap
forward.

---Ken McGlothlen
mcglk@serv.net

Bruce Momjian <maillist@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:

| OK, let's discuss this. How does this affect us? [...]
| Certain people will be tempted by a commercial SQL server, while others
| will prefer us because of:
|
| features

Sorry, but I just don't buy this at the moment, for several reasons.

Don't get me wrong. I like PostgreSQL, and think it could *eventually* kick
butt, but (as always, IMHO) it's Not Ready for Prime Time yet, not by a long
shot. Let's look at some of the most problematic issues at the moment:

* No foreign keys.

This is a real kicker for a lot of people. Foreign keys are a big data
integrity issue. Fortunately, you can get around these with triggers,
but:

* No SQL-based triggers.

Triggers have to be written in C, and this is a big showstopper for a
lot of people.

* No OUTER JOIN (left or right).

Yes, you can simulate some of these with various UNION operators, but
it's definitely off the SQL mainstream.

* 32-bit OIDs.

This pretty much takes PostgreSQL out of the running for large database
projects.

* Hard-to-grok source code.

Open source is great, but PostgreSQL source code still has great swaths
of uncommented stretches of code, and that makes it much more difficult
to do things like add esoteric types, or even extend the functionality
of existing types. I recognize that most of this is because it's still
an amalgam of Postgres with the new stuff, but for PostgreSQL source to
be a "selling point" of the software, it has to make the job of adding
types and functionality *much* easier rather than merely possible.

There are a wide array of other issues, too; the simplistic security, view
limitations, administrational problems (eventually, for example, vacuum should
be unnecessary), analysis issues, replication issues, cross-server database
issues, index limitations, the lack of a good front end designer, the lack of a
good report designer, locking issues, and so on.

As I said, I like PostgreSQL. It could eventually be a serious competitor to
Oracle. I'd love to see it do so. But this news of commercial competitors
will certainly eat away at a good portion of PostgreSQL's commercial customers,
and I can't see PostgreSQL reversing that trend unless 6.5 is a major leap
forward.

You bring up some very good points here.

Consider what we are doing. Commercial database vendors have teams of
full-time programmers, adding features to their databases, while we have
a volunteer group of part-time developers.

Many of the missing items you mention were only added to commercial
databases several years ago. Our database only just added subselects,
which they had years ago. Hard to imagine how we can keep up with
commercial systems. Fortunately, we have many features they don't have,
which we inherited from Berkeley.

Actually, a database server sits on the software complexity scale just
below compilers and OS kernels. This is not easy stuff.

As far as our source code, I think it is very clean. I have made it a
personal project of mine to make it clear, so other people can
understand it and hence contribute. I know our code is cleaner than
MySQL, and I would guess it is cleaner than many of the commercial SQL
engines. Our www site has a new "How PostgreSQL Processes a Query" paper
in the documentation section, that explains the basics of how the backend
works.

So where does that leave us. We are open source, and those running
Linux, FreeBSD, etc. already have chosen open software, so we have an
advantage there.

We clearly are the most advanced "open source" database around. We now
have "closed source" competition. How do we meet that challenge?

-- 
Bruce Momjian                          |  830 Blythe Avenue
maillist@candle.pha.pa.us              |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  (610) 353-9879(w)
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  (610) 853-3000(h)

That is my case:

We have an Sun Ultra Sparc acting as a server for ~ 90 Pc runing M$ Dos or
Windows, almost all playing with a CAD program. I and a few other people
take care of the whole thing.

We need a SQL server but it is very hard for us to have approved a budget
of thousands of dollars to buy, traning and mantain a program like Informix
or Oracle to run in our server when we have to buy computers and programs
that runs CAD to allow ours engineers to work.

So PostgreSQL realley save my life. It runs very well at Sun, I have a very
good support from all of you and I do not need all the stuff Oracle or
Informix offers.

I am now makeing a program that controls all our project files (more than
50.000) that are acessed by people that works where.(It was based in DBF
files). And the files and data will be accessible inside our office or
outside through browsers (CGI etc ...).

I will port a big calc program that will store all data into PostgreSQL.

I see PostgreSQL not only as a program for PC runing Linux but also as a
very good alternative for all unix box.

Roberto

OK, let's discuss this. How does this affect us? With all three
releasing around the same time, they really dilute themselves. I can't
imagine most people trying more than one of the commercial alternatives.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Eng. Roberto João Lopes Garcia E-mail: roberto@mha.com.br
F. 55 11 848 9906 FAX 55 11 848 9955

MHA Engenharia Ltda
E-mail: mha@mha.com.br WWW: http://www.mha.com.br

Av Maia Coelho Aguiar, 215 Bloco D 2 Andar
Centro Empresarial de Sao Paulo
Sao Paulo - BRASIL - 05805 000
-------------------------------------------------------------------

maillist@candle.pha.pa.us (Bruce Momjian) writes:

| Consider what we are doing. Commercial database vendors have teams of
| full-time programmers, adding features to their databases, while we have a
| volunteer group of part-time developers.

Oh! I'd never *dream* of maligning the coders working on PostgreSQL. For a
volunteer grass-roots effort, PostgreSQL is a paragon of virtue---one of the
reasons I like it. And writing complex database packages of this sort isn't
exactly chimp-stuff, either---I think any of us would vouch for that.

Ultimately, the crux of the matter is this: who are we *targeting* as our
competition? If we're looking at the mSQL and mySQL camp, clearly PostgreSQL
stomps them both, from both the SQL support side and the data-security side.
(And yes, I'd agree that the code is *ever* so much neater than MySQL.)

But if we're trying to position ourselves as a viable alternative to the big
commercial ones, such as Oracle and Informix and Sybase and MS SQL Server, we
need to work on a lot of issues. Open source is perceived in the business
community as a big risk, and not a benefit. Even today, someone said to me,
"Oh, that's all we need, some Linux guru spending three or four hours on
compiling a new kernel rather than attending to his actual duties." (Yes, I'll
be the first to admit that it was a stupid statement, but as a consultant, I
can't just say, "What a stupid statement." It takes time to win over people
like this; you have to throw a product at them that makes them go, "Geez, that
was cool, and it saved us a lot of time and money.")

| Fortunately, we have many features they don't have, which we inherited from
| Berkeley.

Yes. But at the moment, they have a bunch of *fundamental* features that we
don't have. That's what worries me as far as general acceptance of PostgreSQL
by the business community.

| I have made it a personal project of mine to make it clear, so other people
| can understand it and hence contribute.

A lot more could be done. More comments. Breaking out individual datatypes
into their own modules (ready-made templates for new types that require
implementation in C!). But to your (and others') credit, it's gotten quite a
bit cleaner just in the last year.

| We clearly are the most advanced "open source" database around. We now
| have "closed source" competition. How do we meet that challenge?

If we can clear up some of the glaring lackings in PostgreSQL by year-end, I
think it'll've been met pretty well.

Oracle now comes along and says that it is going to have a
Linux-binary distribution available. So? How much is that binary going
to cost? And what sort of licensing is provided?

--

What version of Linux? What Platform ? Full featured?

Don't kid yourselves about Oracle. Take it from someone who participates
on a Linux Mailing list also: There are countless versions of Linux out
there, running on every platform ever invented. Oracle would have to
release source code ( ha ha) to be a true linux port. I run LinuxPPC on
a power mac, and if they port to this then I will eat a huge plate of
crow.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
|John Dzilvelis |
-----------------------------------------------------------------

On Tue, 21 Jul 1998, Bruce Tong wrote:

I say this with these (mostly uninformed) assumptions in mind. Oracle's
ODBC driver is probably more complete. Oracle is better documented. Oracle
has a lot of related tools. Oracle offers training.

What does Oracle's ODBC driver offer that ours currently doesn't?
Have you looked at recent documentation? It has changes
dramatically over the past couple of months...
What do you mean by "related tools"?
Training in...administration? We run it at my "real job", and
Oracle *has* to offer training for administration...its a
nightmare.

features

As many posts I see to this list are "how do I do this" - "not
implemented, wait for a later version", I'm not sure why you would make
this claim. Again, I'm not a person who spends a great deal of time on
databases and I do consider myself uninformed.

features != ANSI SQL compliance, right? Again, what are we
missing that Oracle currently has...?

support

The mailing lists are nice. I appreciate them very much. There's probably
a mailing list for Oracle. What more is there for support?

My experience with paid support vs mailings lists tends to have me
much preferring mailing lists. At least on a mailing list, you have a
good chance of finding someone that has already hit that same problem...

On Tue, 21 Jul 1998, Ken McGlothlen wrote:

There are a wide array of other issues, too; the simplistic security,
view limitations, administrational problems (eventually, for example,
vacuum should be unnecessary), analysis issues, replication issues,
cross-server database issues, index limitations, the lack of a good
front end designer, the lack of a good report designer, locking issues,
and so on.

Alot of good points here, and some not so good...last I checked,
vacuum was still required for Oracle, no? Its been awhile since I've
looked at it from a DBA perspective, so this may no longer be the case...

As for 'front end and report designers'...there are several of
them out there currently, most, from what I've seen, *look* good:

MPSQL: http://troubador.com/~keidav/images/screenshots/sot.jpg
MPMGR: http://troubador.com/~keidav/mpmgr.html
- if nobody has checked out the screenshots on this,
check it out
EARPII: http://www.oswego.edu/~ddougher/EARP2
PGAccess: http://www.flex.ro/pgaccess
- does Forms, Reports and Scripts
PGAdmin: http://www.vale-housing.co.uk/it/software
- no screenshots, unfortunately :(
GtkSQL: http://www.mygale.org/~bbrox/GtkSQL
KPGsql: http://home.primus.baynet.de/mgeisler/kpgsql
- KDE frontend

If there are features within those that you feel are missing, talk
to the authors, offer to help...

What I'd like to see, though, is a detailed version of your list
above. For instance, what locking issues? Low-level locking that Vadim
is working on for v6.4? What analysis issues? If we could get the list
above with explanations of each, then Bruce can add them to the TODO list.
Without explanations, some, if not all, will sit there forever since
nobody will understand *what* is being asked :)

Some of them might be small, no brainer additions that nobody
thought about...*shrug*

On Tue, 21 Jul 1998, Bruce Momjian wrote:

We clearly are the most advanced "open source" database around. We now
have "closed source" competition. How do we meet that challenge?

You want an honest answer? We don't. Or, at least, we don't
think of it as meeting a challenge.

We've spent the past, what, 2 years now, building PostgreSQL up to
something that we (the developers) are proud to work with and support, and
are confident in both using, and promoting for use, in real, production
environments.

Oracle now comes along and says that it is going to have a
Linux-binary distribution available. So? How much is that binary going
to cost? And what sort of licensing is provided?

How many ppl are going to flock to Oracle because all of a sudden
they have a Linux port of it? I just checked their list of 'supported
platforms', and here at the University, we run almost a half a dozen of
them (Win95, WinNT, Solaris x86, Sparc/Solaris, Netware)...its not as if I
don't have a machine that I can pay the same price for Oracle and run it
on them...

Continue our trend...continuing listening to the ppl asking for
various "reasonable" features and working towards providing them. I
support free/open software because, IMHO, the software is generally better
written, and more featured, because those that are developing it are doing
so because they *enjoy* what they are doing, they have a passion for
it...not because some large company is paying them to do it.

IMHO, the most important thing that is happening right now is
Vadim's work at getting LLL in place for v6.4. To me, that is as
important, if not more so, in a 'multi-user, concurrent' system as
transactions are, as on a multi-user system, it would be a performance
increase due to less ppl having to wait to make changes...

I would like to see Ken's list of missing items expanded with
explanations and added to the TODO list, as appropriate, since I think he
brought up alot of good points, but I think that "panick'ng" because
Oracle has announced an upcoming release of a Linux binary is
counter-productive...

My comments are driven by perceptions. I admit they're uninformed. The
topic is advertising PostgreSQL, so my perceptions are relevant. Educate
me and the masses about your product. I'm hear because I think PostgreSQL
is a useful tool.

I say this with these (mostly uninformed) assumptions in mind. Oracle's
ODBC driver is probably more complete. Oracle is better documented. Oracle
has a lot of related tools. Oracle offers training.

What does Oracle's ODBC driver offer that ours currently doesn't?

I just tried it for the first time last week. It failed to perform a
simple query. I need to double check my work yet. The Oracle ODBC driver
has _probably_ been around for a while and has _probably_ been better
tested perhaps simply by raw numbers of users.

Have you looked at recent documentation? It has changed
dramatically over the past couple of months...

I like to think I check your docs regularly, but I'm sure there's stuff I
miss. From my experience documentation is examples, HOWTO's, web sites,
and man pages which are all good approaches. The trouble is there is no
place which coordinates this. Searches tend to be a brute force effort for
me because I do not yet understand how the material is organized. I'm sure
if you've been around PostgreSQL for a couple of years you know the sorts
of things to expect to find in the man pages. To me, I never would have
thought to search the man pages for GRANT and REVOKE, or any SQL for that
matter.

In fact, documentation is probably the only place I can help your
development effort at this time since I cannot see the big picture. Hence,
the journal I'm keeping could be turned into a tutorial, which I suppose
it actually my goal.

What do you mean by "related tools"?

Good question. What is Oracle Power Objects? What is Oracle/2000? I see
these things advertised. What do they do, and is an equivalent available
for PostgreSQL assuming it is a relavent product?

Training in...administration? We run it at my "real job", and
Oracle *has* to offer training for administration...its a
nightmare.

Administration, yes.

features

As many posts I see to this list are "how do I do this" - "not
implemented, wait for a later version", I'm not sure why you would make
this claim. Again, I'm not a person who spends a great deal of time on
databases and I do consider myself uninformed.

features != ANSI SQL compliance, right?

I suppose ANSI SQL is the heart of it.

Again, what are we missing that Oracle currently has...?

If you offer the same features, then list those features in a comparison
on your web site. Take a "See... we do everything Oracle does."

support

The mailing lists are nice. I appreciate them very much. There's probably
a mailing list for Oracle. What more is there for support?

My experience with paid support vs mailings lists tends to have me
much preferring mailing lists. At least on a mailing list, you have a
good chance of finding someone that has already hit that same problem.

That's my experience too. Notice I didn't mention paid support. My point
here is if there's a list for Oracle, then you are the same in this
category.

Bruce Tong | Got me an office; I'm there late at night.
Systems Programmer | Just send me e-mail, maybe I'll write.
Electronic Vision / FITNE |
zztong@laxmi.ev.net | -- Joe Walsh for the 21st Century

---The Hermit Hacker <scrappy@hub.org> wrote:

On Tue, 21 Jul 1998, Bruce Momjian wrote:

We clearly are the most advanced "open source" database around.

We now

have "closed source" competition. How do we meet that challenge?

You want an honest answer? We don't. Or, at least, we don't
think of it as meeting a challenge.

I agree, I think it's a bad news for Sybase, but a very good news for
Linux.

And if it's good for Linux, it's good for pgsql.

--
Herve Lefebvre

_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

On Wed, 22 Jul 1998, Bruce Tong wrote:

My comments are driven by perceptions. I admit they're uninformed. The
topic is advertising PostgreSQL, so my perceptions are relevant. Educate
me and the masses about your product. I'm hear because I think PostgreSQL
is a useful tool.

Perceptions from the 'admittedly uninformed' helps...:)

I say this with these (mostly uninformed) assumptions in mind. Oracle's
ODBC driver is probably more complete. Oracle is better documented. Oracle
has a lot of related tools. Oracle offers training.

What does Oracle's ODBC driver offer that ours currently doesn't?

I just tried it for the first time last week. It failed to perform a
simple query. I need to double check my work yet. The Oracle ODBC driver
has _probably_ been around for a while and has _probably_ been better
tested perhaps simply by raw numbers of users.

Have you mentioned this on pgsql-interfaces@postgresql.org? David
and Bryon are both very vocal over there, and are quick to pop up to help
those using the ODBC drivers, as they are the ones that are developing it.

Have you looked at recent documentation? It has changed
dramatically over the past couple of months...

I like to think I check your docs regularly, but I'm sure there's stuff I
miss. From my experience documentation is examples, HOWTO's, web sites,
and man pages which are all good approaches. The trouble is there is no
place which coordinates this. Searches tend to be a brute force effort for
me because I do not yet understand how the material is organized. I'm sure
if you've been around PostgreSQL for a couple of years you know the sorts
of things to expect to find in the man pages. To me, I never would have
thought to search the man pages for GRANT and REVOKE, or any SQL for that
matter.

In fact, documentation is probably the only place I can help your
development effort at this time since I cannot see the big picture. Hence,
the journal I'm keeping could be turned into a tutorial, which I suppose
it actually my goal.

Any comments, opinions or suggested changes is welcome...are you
on the pgsql-docs mailing list?

As for your perception of the documentation, have you checked out:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs

recently? I've recently done a major cleanup of it so that the
links there are presented a little more clearly, but there are 5
guide/manuals listed right at the top that you might find sligthly more
informative those docs you list above...

What do you mean by "related tools"?

Good question. What is Oracle Power Objects? What is Oracle/2000? I see
these things advertised. What do they do, and is an equivalent available
for PostgreSQL assuming it is a relavent product?

I don't know, can't help you there...I don't use Oracle, so
someone with experience in that area will have to pop up and help :)

Training in...administration? We run it at my "real job", and
Oracle *has* to offer training for administration...its a
nightmare.

Administration, yes.

So far, my experience with PostgreSQL has been that
'administrative functions' tend to be few, but there is a Administrator's
Guide that documents, I think, most of what you need to know.

My opinion, though, tends to be that I learn more from a book,
then from other ppl, except for clarification of what I've read...

Again, what are we missing that Oracle currently has...?

If you offer the same features, then list those features in a comparison
on your web site. Take a "See... we do everything Oracle does.

Hasn't been updated in awhile, but see:

http://www.postgresql.org/comp-comparison.shtml

That's my experience too. Notice I didn't mention paid support. My point
here is if there's a list for Oracle, then you are the same in this
category.

That depends...we are only the same if you get similar support
through the Oracle list as you do here...

MPSQL: http://troubador.com/~keidav/images/screenshots/sot.jpg
MPMGR: http://troubador.com/~keidav/mpmgr.html
- if nobody has checked out the screenshots on this,
check it out

This one is looking *sooo* cool. Anybody knows of a good toolkit the
author can switch to? (he asks for suggestions on the page above). I think
up till now it was motif based? Is lesstif already up to this kind of
work? Is it easier to switch from motif to gtk than to switch to qt?

EARPII: http://www.oswego.edu/~ddougher/EARP2
PGAccess: http://www.flex.ro/pgaccess
- does Forms, Reports and Scripts
PGAdmin: http://www.vale-housing.co.uk/it/software
- no screenshots, unfortunately :(
GtkSQL: http://www.mygale.org/~bbrox/GtkSQL
KPGsql: http://home.primus.baynet.de/mgeisler/kpgsql
- KDE frontend

Maarten
_____________________________________________________________________________
| TU Delft, The Netherlands, Faculty of Information Technology and Systems |
| Department of Electrical Engineering |
| Computer Architecture and Digital Technique section |
| M.Boekhold@et.tudelft.nl |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

---Bruce Tong <zztong@laxmi.ev.net> wrote:

features != ANSI SQL compliance, right?

I suppose ANSI SQL is the heart of it.

Again, what are we missing that Oracle currently has...?

Stored procedures with tuples resultset:

SELECT F1,F2,F3 FROM TABL1

And Multi-resultsets stored-procedures:

SELECT F1,F2 FROM TABLE1
SELECT F3,F4,F5 FROM TABLE2

And how can we declare/use variables with PG-SQL ?

With Sybase (and oracle) I can do that:

PROCECURE p (@org_account int, @dest_account int, @amount money)
as
DECLARE @balance money
BEGIN TRAN
SELECT @balance=balance
FROM account_table
WHERE @account_num=@org_account

/* Check if enough money on the account */
IF @balance<@amount
BEGIN
ROLLBACK TRAN
RETURN -1 /* Not enough money */
END

/* proceed with the updates */
...

COMMIT TRAN
RETURN 0
go

How to do a such stored procedure with pgSQL ? (please, don't say me
to write it in C language ).

--
H.L.
_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

My experience with paid support vs mailings lists tends to have me
much preferring mailing lists. At least on a mailing list, you have a
good chance of finding someone that has already hit that same problem.

Actually, I tend to end up supporting the product for which I am trying to be
supported...not that that is bad ;-)

Actually, most of my problems are answered before they happen, because I am
constantly monitoring the list.

As far as documentation goes, I think that for the most part what is there is
good. Sometimes (and I realize I need to be more specific) it seems the very
thing you are looking for you can't find; in the end that generally has been an
issue of inexperience with SQL. It seems to me, though, that there needs to be
some sort of documentation that takes a beginner write through the whole system
step by step and never leaving out the gory details, explaining things piece by
piece, until at the end of this the user has become an "expert". Again, I need to
be more specific, and as I mull over this I might be able to be that, but now, I
don't see documentation that is really designed to take someone who doesn't know
squat about SQL and get them to the point where they are "experts". Perhaps that
is not PostgreSQL's problem, but it would be nice.

Of course, if your write it, it doesn't mean they will read it ;-)

...james

What does Oracle's ODBC driver offer that ours currently doesn't?

I just tried it for the first time last week. It failed to perform a
simple query. I need to double check my work yet. The Oracle ODBC driver
has _probably_ been around for a while and has _probably_ been better
tested perhaps simply by raw numbers of users.

Have you mentioned this on pgsql-interfaces@postgresql.org? David
and Bryon are both very vocal over there, and are quick to pop up to help
those using the ODBC drivers, as they are the ones that are developing it.

Nope. I wanted to check my work first. Its my first attempt at using the
ODBC driver and MS-Access has changed (for the worse interface-wise) a lot
since v1.1. It may even have something to do with the way I've declared
the tables on the PostgreSQL side.

[ Documentation ]

Any comments, opinions or suggested changes is welcome...are you
on the pgsql-docs mailing list?

No, but I will be shortly.

As for your perception of the documentation, have you [recently] checked
out:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs

It's been a few weeks. I'll look again.

My opinion, though, tends to be that I learn more from a book,
then from other ppl, except for clarification of what I've read...

I too learn a lot from books. But on new subjects, a short class covering
the idea behind the technology really helps. A little theory goes a long
way. I can figure out the "How" if I know the "Why."

Bruce Tong | Got me an office; I'm there late at night.
Systems Programmer | Just send me e-mail, maybe I'll write.
Electronic Vision / FITNE |
zztong@laxmi.ev.net | -- Joe Walsh for the 21st Century