[ale] WooHoo!! PostgreSQL 9.1!

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Sat, 2011-09-17 at 10:23 -0400, Narahari 'n' Savitha wrote:
> Just curious why it s the best rdbms ?

There are a number of reasons.  I'm just going to be touching the tip of
the iceberg here; independent research will be of far better use to you.

First, features:

 * Rich data types out of the box.
 * The ability to define new data types with ease.
 * The notion of database.schema.table makes compartmentalization of
   data used by a single application very simple.
 * The ability to use multiple languages for stored procedures is
   just plain awesome.
 * Only a single type of data storage, which means that it gets all
   of the attention and is optimized and better-tested than database
   engines that have multiple storage types (such as MySQL).
 * ACID compliant, through and through.  There are no table types or
   associated bologna that discard data/referential integrity for
   any reason at all.
 * Security is taken seriously.
 * BSD license, which means that you can embed it in your software
   system without all the complications that the special MySQL (and
   thus derivatives) license (GPL with modifications, essentially)
   gives you.  No need to consult a lawyer about getting a binary
   or proprietary license, either, because it's BSD.
 * Takes data integrity VERY seriously.
 * Takes data integrity VERY SERIOUSLY.
 * TAKES DATA INTEGRITY VERY SERIOUSLY.

I think that's probably a good start.  :-)

It is also in many ways much more compliant with the SQL standard than
MySQL is.  I've never used Oracle, but I have heard people who have used
Oracle say that PostgreSQL is much more like Oracle than it is any other
RDBMS.  Again, I can't speak to the veracity of that statement, but I
can say this: I won't do new projects on top of MySQL if there is any
way that I can avoid it.  MySQL is a joke when it comes to database
engines.  It is sloppy, it doesn't really care about things like
referential integrity.  You can make all sorts of little tweaks and
modifications to try to gain the integrity support that PostgreSQL gives
you out of the box, but why bother when you can deploy a database engine
with a relatively stock configuration that is well-to-do both in
performance and security?

You can also extend PostgreSQL very easily by writing modules for it;
you can do something similar for MySQL, but you would have to
reimplement a good chunk of what's already in PostgreSQL as modules for
MySQL before MySQL started to look like a truly viable option.

MySQL is more like SQLite than most people would like to think.  Except
that even SQLite has better support for data integrity in many
situations, and they consider themselves to be not a replacement for an
RDBMS, but a replacement for the fopen() C library call.

	--- Mike

-- 
A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic
than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense.
                                  --- Carveth Read, “Logic”