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New Access, MySQL, PostgreSQL? Why don't you consider a REAL...
...RDBMS -- with stored procedures, SQL-code triggers, "Generators" (="Sequences"), UDFs, etc, etc...?

Available in a [link|http://www.interbase.com|fully commercial version], an [link|http://firebird.sourceforge.net|Open Source version], and a [link|http://www.ibphoenix.com|commercially-supported 'certified' variant] of the Open Source version; something for every taste and wallet.

I just don't understand why people persist in futzing around with stupid kludges, when there's so much better stuff out there...?
   Christian R. Conrad
Microsoft is a true reflection of Bill Gates' personality - the sleaziest, most unethical, ugliest little rat's ass the world has seen unto this time.
-- [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=42971|Andrew Grygus]
New Christian, WTF are you on about?
Point out one of those features that PostgreSQL doesn't have, apart from the commercial version...

Regards,

-scott anderson

"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
New In that case, I'll point to one it *does* have:
A certain Web Forum administrator constantly whining about its horrible drivers, that's one feature PgSql certainly *does* seem to have! :-)

Naah, might not be too much wrong with PgSql; it just annoys the Hell out of me how it seems that once people realize MySql isn't the only open-source RDBMS in the world, it's only because they think PgSql is the only alternative... :-(

Oh yeah, one more thing: How big is PgSql? It just struck me, one other feature it might have, might be Codus Bloatitis... Is it a lot more than a two-and-a-half meg download?

Not that the features I mentioned are the only ones IB/FB has; there's a lot more (among them, a few things Soothsayer is advertising as Great Innovations... Dunno how long IB/FB has had External Tables, f'rinstance).

But the main fault with it, IMO, is its sheer "mind-share", which AFAICS can't help but be totally out of proportion to its merit (and in that sense is, at least in large part, "undeserved"); a "feature" where, it seems to me, PgSql is beaten only by MySql.

See where I'm coming from?


[Edit:] So the "persist in futzing around with stupid kludges" bit was really more about Access and MySql; PgSql got thrown in mostly because it was -- NOW do you SEE where I'm coming from?!? -- the only alternative to those that seemed to have even OCCURRED to the Other Scott.
   Christian R. Conrad
Microsoft is a true reflection of Bill Gates' personality - the sleaziest, most unethical, ugliest little rat's ass the world has seen unto this time.
-- [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=42971|Andrew Grygus]
Expand Edited by CRConrad Nov. 21, 2002, 07:03:19 PM EST
New Um, my tinfoil hat seem to work better on you than on admin.
:-)

I looked, a little bit, at lots of other databases. Paradox 10, Interbase/Firebird, Filemaker Pro, and others. I'm not wedded to Access nor MySQL - it's just a place to start for the moment.

...PgSql got thrown in mostly because it was -- NOW do you SEE where I'm coming from?!? -- the only alternative to those that seemed to have even OCCURRED to the Other Scott.

I thought my post was too long as it was! :-)

Cheers,
Scott.
New Yours?!? Isn't it *I* who should be wearing one?
The Other Scott:
I looked, a little bit, at lots of other databases. Paradox 10, Interbase/Firebird, Filemaker Pro, and others. I'm not wedded to Access nor MySQL - it's just a place to start for the moment.
Yeah, we know that *now*... But, no prob:
...PgSql got thrown in mostly because it was -- NOW do you SEE where I'm coming from?!? -- the only alternative to those that seemed to have even OCCURRED to the Other Scott.
See how by this stage, I used the _past tense_ of "seemed"? :-)


I thought my post was too long as it was! :-)
Yours (almost?) never are.
   Christian R. Conrad
Microsoft is a true reflection of Bill Gates' personality - the sleaziest, most unethical, ugliest little rat's ass the world has seen unto this time.
-- [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=42971|Andrew Grygus]
New PostgreSQL Python drivers...
... are not distributed with Postgres... they are '3rd party' drivers.

The source download is about 9 megs, which includes the backend, utilities, interface APIs (jdbc, tcl, c/c++, odbc, perl, python {not the one I'm using}, and a couple other I don't recognize), the stored proc languages (plpgsql, tcl, perl, python), and the test suite.

The full suite of RHAT RPMs looks to be about 6M or so.

What are External Tables?

Does Interbase have polymorphism/inheritance for its tables?
Regards,

-scott anderson

"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
New Lot better than I thought... All your fault, though! ;^)
AdmiScott:
PostgreSQL Python drivers [...] are not distributed with Postgres... they are '3rd party' drivers.
Yeah, I suppose I knew that, actually... Hey, I was only trying to make my outburst seem half-way coherent; don't go robbing a poor man of his cobbled-up defense, nowwouldya!?! :-)


The source download is about 9 megs [...] The full suite of RHAT RPMs looks to be about 6M or so.
Wow, that's a LOT better than I thought -- I had the impression it must be in the tens (at LEAST -- possibly HUNDREDS, I'd have thought!) of megabytes.

That must be because you (and p[ossi|roba]bly some others) have so often compared it to Oracle -- which, as you know, doesn't even fit on a single CD! (WTF do they DO with all those hundreds of megabytes?!?)


[...] which includes the backend, utilities, interface APIs (jdbc, tcl, c/c++, odbc, perl, python {not the one I'm using}, and a couple other I don't recognize), the stored proc languages (plpgsql, tcl, perl, python), and the test suite.
That may well be a bit more than at least FB's ~2.5-MB download includes; depends a bit on what you mean by "utilities", and I can't recall at the moment what language inerfaces it includes (probably not as many). And IB proper, while it probably has more stuff, is of course a whole lot bigger, too.


What are External Tables?
The most elegant, IMO (and perhaps easiest), way of getting external data into your DB: just declare a table as residing not actually in your db-file/"table space", but in an external (flat ASCII) file. If you want to move data into the DB permanently (which I assume is a requirement in order to get more efficient indexing, and prolly stuff like referential integrity and so on), just do an SQL copy to another, regular DB-internal, table. You'll have to define field delimiters or column positions, perhaps line-end styles, and so on -- but at least you don't have to mess around with separate programs, which of course require that anyway (coughSQL*Loadercough), any more.


Does Interbase have polymorphism/inheritance for its tables?
Not that I know of... What is *that*?

(Unless you mean the easy way of "inheriting" structure as well as data into a new table in some RDBMSes, by doing a "SELECT <whatever> INTO <New Table Name>"? :-)
   Christian R. Conrad
Microsoft is a true reflection of Bill Gates' personality - the sleaziest, most unethical, ugliest little rat's ass the world has seen unto this time.
-- [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=42971|Andrew Grygus]
New Re: Lot better than I thought... All your fault, though! ;^)
(WTF do they DO with all those hundreds of megabytes?!?)
They keep the HD manufacturers in business with them, of course...
What are External Tables?
The most elegant, IMO (and perhaps easiest), way of getting external data into your DB: just declare a table as residing not actually in your db-file/"table space", but in an external (flat ASCII) file. If you want to move data into the DB permanently (which I assume is a requirement in order to get more efficient indexing, and prolly stuff like referential integrity and so on), just do an SQL copy to another, regular DB-internal, table. You'll have to define field delimiters or column positions, perhaps line-end styles, and so on -- but at least you don't have to mess around with separate programs, which of course require that anyway (coughSQL*Loadercough), any more.
Hmm. I guess I would rather just use the [link|http://www.us.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/7.2/postgres/sql-copy.html|COPY] command and be done with it...

Does Interbase have polymorphism/inheritance for its tables?
Not that I know of... What is *that*?
[link|http://www.us.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/7.2/postgres/inherit.html|http://www.us.postgr...gres/inherit.html]


Other interesting features of Postgres include the geometric types, user-defined types/functions/operators, and (one of the best things) the ability to use nearly any language you want to as a stored procedure (with a little extra work to integrate it first if it hasn't already been done).
Regards,

-scott anderson

"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
New "user-defined types" - would that be SQL-standard 'domains'?
If so, then that (along with roles and views and Idunno what all) is among the many IB/FB features I neglected to mention. As opposed to UDFs, which IIRC I *did* mention... :-)

So what are you saying -- that Larry is collecting a percentage from Seagate, Maxtor, et al?
   Christian R. Conrad
Microsoft is a true reflection of Bill Gates' personality - the sleaziest, most unethical, ugliest little rat's ass the world has seen unto this time.
-- [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=42971|Andrew Grygus]
New user-defined types
As in, write some external code with save/restore functions, etc., to make your very own new FarbleBanger base type.

[link|http://www.us.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/7.2/postgres/xtypes.html|http://www.us.postgr...tgres/xtypes.html]
Regards,

-scott anderson

"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
New Wow, cool; the FB dev list is only now talking about that...
...kind of thing. Or, OK, they've been mentioning it, on and off, for a bit over a year AFAICR. But it ain't there yet. (Also somewhat reminiscent of how to build TField-descendant object classes, for client-side apps that attach to different kind of DBMSes, in Delphi; those "save/restore functions" are analogous to the getter/setter methods for the AsString property.)

Cool to see that PgSql seems to have copied IB's basic "multigenerational" ("multiversion", in Postgres-speak) architecture, too. (Doesn't seem quite consistently pervasive, though.)

Yeah yeah, I'll lay off the bashing... If the freaking WORLD lays off the hyping! :-)
   Christian R. Conrad
Microsoft is a true reflection of Bill Gates' personality - the sleaziest, most unethical, ugliest little rat's ass the world has seen unto this time.
-- [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=42971|Andrew Grygus]
New Postgres is really a research database
For trying out new things. People use it for the real world too, though. :-)

Some of the contrib items are pretty nifty as well, like the fulltext indexing I use here.
Regards,

-scott anderson

"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
New That...is frickin cool.
I am way too much of an LCD designer to ever use it but I can dream, can't I?

Many fears are born of stupidity and ignorance -
Which you should be feeding with rumour and generalisation.
BOfH, 2002 "Episode" 10
New What, the inheritance?
Yeah, very.
Regards,

-scott anderson

"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
New Cool!
APL as a stored procedure langauge - must investigate...

That is very hip, thanks for pointing it out (would never have guessed).
-drl

I'm so happy I could scalp someone. Mark Twain
New I glanced at it, but didn't bite.
Don't ask me why... I'll keep it on the list. Thanks for the reminder!

Cheers,
Scott.
     Excel 97 spreadsheet to Excel database + form. Tips? - (Another Scott) - (43)
         I'd export to a delimited file - (drewk) - (14)
             Thanks, but that's not what I'm looking for... - (Another Scott) - (13)
                 There's another issue with XL. - (mmoffitt) - (12)
                     Get warp and mesa - (jake123) - (11)
                         REXX??? As in Tyrannosaurus? <vbg? -NT - (mmoffitt) - (10)
                             Pretty much, considering - (jake123) - (9)
                                 REXX is the pre-perl perl -NT - (wharris2) - (8)
                                     Maybe... - (jake123) - (5)
                                         Cheap shots :=) - (wharris2)
                                         How is that a lot easier? - (ben_tilly) - (3)
                                             I didn't say easier. - (jake123) - (2)
                                                 OK, but... - (ben_tilly) - (1)
                                                     Equivalent in REXX - (jake123)
                                     BZZT - Utterly wrong - (deSitter) - (1)
                                         know how you feel - (cforde)
         Nah...its trivial in Access too. - (bepatient) - (8)
             God, Beep! Bound Forms! Bleech! - (mmoffitt) - (7)
                 It sounded like what he needed. - (bepatient) - (6)
                     Understood. - (mmoffitt) - (5)
                         Not knowing Access all that well... - (CRConrad) - (4)
                             The problem with Access. - (static) - (1)
                                 nutshell: Access expects denormalization. - (tseliot)
                             Access has some "special features" - (mmoffitt) - (1)
                                 Thanks, that's quite enough. On that other thing, though... - (CRConrad)
         DTS? - (gdaustin) - (18)
             Spreadsheet grows up to be a Real Application - (gdaustin) - (17)
                 I'm looking at Access and MySQL now. - (Another Scott) - (16)
                     Access, MySQL, PostgreSQL? Why don't you consider a REAL... - (CRConrad) - (15)
                         Christian, WTF are you on about? - (admin) - (13)
                             In that case, I'll point to one it *does* have: - (CRConrad) - (12)
                                 Um, my tinfoil hat seem to work better on you than on admin. - (Another Scott) - (1)
                                     Yours?!? Isn't it *I* who should be wearing one? - (CRConrad)
                                 PostgreSQL Python drivers... - (admin) - (9)
                                     Lot better than I thought... All your fault, though! ;^) - (CRConrad) - (8)
                                         Re: Lot better than I thought... All your fault, though! ;^) - (admin) - (7)
                                             "user-defined types" - would that be SQL-standard 'domains'? - (CRConrad) - (3)
                                                 user-defined types - (admin) - (2)
                                                     Wow, cool; the FB dev list is only now talking about that... - (CRConrad) - (1)
                                                         Postgres is really a research database - (admin)
                                             That...is frickin cool. - (tseliot) - (1)
                                                 What, the inheritance? - (admin)
                                             Cool! - (deSitter)
                         I glanced at it, but didn't bite. - (Another Scott)

The sleek race lines of an outhouse standing on a garbage scow.
89 ms