Dear all,
Their was a huge rore about MySQL recently for something in java functions
now theirs one more http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/News-5.0.x.html
Does this concern anyone.
What I think is PostgreSQL would have less USP's (Uniqe Selling Points
though we dont sell) now.
What do you think yes we PostgreSQL users need some introspection.
Regards,
Vishal Kashyap.
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Nov 12 '05
175  11173 
The native windows port is certainly useful for me.... when I was
developing for MySQL applications, I always ran a copy on my Windows
laptop which started as a service, and was most useful. I used to Rapid
Devel and prototype all of my DB apps this way.
Whilst I can (and do) run PG on my laptop, it not nearly as straight
forward, and when wanting to share my work with others at a conference,
trying to explain to them that they need to install Cygwin and IPC stuff
and then download PG then compile it, etc, etc. They usually lose
interest quickly.
When people want to try/play/prototype, installing Unix (many companies
still don't have spare, non-essential unix/linux boxen kicking around to
play with.
You don't understand the mindset behind the *yapping* MySQL users
because you DO understand PostgreSQL, because you appear to judge other
people by your own standards, instead of saying to yourself "There but
for the Grace of PostgreSQL Go I"
Try to understand that not everyone is blessed by your knowledge of PG,
or by your clarity of thought. It's easy to start throwing stones and
rocks at people, but I'm sure that we could all be criticised on our
choice of our software choices in one respect or another, since none of
us are beyond reproach, and we can't all be experts at everything.
The only reason that I'm making these points is that a few weeks ago I
thought the world was flat too, but a few people on this list took time
to explain to me with fact based points that the world was in fact
spherical and PG was a good thing.
How can you expect someone to understand why Nested Select staments are
good, if they ndo ot necessarilly understand what they might be good
for. In my experience, more than one time when investigating PG I had
a list of features MySQL lacked blurted at me without even considering
whether I understood what was being said. It may as well have been
Charlie Brown's Teacher talking to me ("whah whah, whah whah")
Remember Windows/MySQL users are Windows users usually for three
reasons: 1. They are blissfully ignorant of alternatives and don't know
any better. 2. Don't have the ability to be productive with the
alternatives, or don't have time to learn them (some people need to just
use computers without making them their lives) 3. Use laptops/PCs
provided by a work environment and must use Windows/MySQL because of
Tools, Programs, Applications and don't have the option to change.
Zealotry is not good in any form, whether it's pro or anti MySQL, PG,
Windows or whatever. Shouting about how another religion is bad doesn't
make your point of view sound any less fanatical.
I'll get off my soapbox now. But I was eventually convinced that PG was
good, and in turn I too have convinced a few MySQL users to take a
closer look at PG, that's how a community grows. Not with venom
spitting and name calling. I'm now a full card carrying member of
PostgreSQL, but fortunately never happened across any PG zealots during
my search.
Just my 2 cents. Flame away
Tony.
Casey Allen Shobe wrote: Martin Marques (Friday 26 December 2003 14:11)
Windows native port might be out in the next release (name it 7.5 or 8.0),
with many other things there, and it should be out by fall of next year,
which is much earlier then 2 years. :-)
Great. But I really don't see how this makes the DBMS any better at all. So
what if there's a native Windows port? Nobody that I've ever met or talked
to uses MySQL on Windows anyways, and you can always use cygwin if you're
really desperate.
PostgreSQL is primarily an open-source database for open-source systems. If
somebody wants to use MySQL just because they can run it on Windows, I say
let them.
What I *do* see is a whole bunch of MySQL users running around yapping about
how great and fantastic and fast MySQL is and how crappy PostgreSQL is. I
really don't understand them, and they're impossible to reason with.
You can ask "Does MySQL support nested select statements? I use these every
day", and they respond with "You can just use MySQL's proprietary SQL
extensions to do the same thing another way; and MySQL is fast, too!".
I think about the same of these people as I do of people who rave about the
superiority of Windows, their chosen religion, or the country they live in -
underinformed bigots.
From all that I've read in terms of power, flexibility, and features,
PostgreSQL is far ahead of MySQL. And I've yet to see even the slightest
speed issue with a properly designed database schema. Maybe MySQL is faster
with un-normalized tables, and that's why they like to say it's faster? I
don't know, but I really don't care if that's the case.
Vertu sæll,
Sadly a company will believe anything that a consultant they trust tells
them. Otherwise there'd be little point in hiring a consultant to give
them advice would there?
It seems rather illogical that you'd refuse to work with a company that
had been given potentially sub-standard advice, based on what appears to
be a theological view?
Either that or you have more consulting work than you know what to do
with, that you can afford to base business decisions on an ideological
basis.
If I chose not to work with companies that used Windows as servers
(because IMHO, Windows is not a good server environment) my house
would've been repossessed, and I'd have probably starved by now.
T.
Keith C. Perry wrote: The way I look at it is that I probably don't want to deal with a
company that thinks that MySQL on windows is "good environment".
On 28/12/2003 14:44 Tony wrote: [snip]
This really rattled some peoples cages and I ended up defending PG
against some really ill thought out attacks. Like:
MySQL User: But can PG deal with really complicated joins.
Me: In many cases the extra functionality of PG avoids the problems
where really complicated joins would be needed in MySQL
MySQL User: But MySQL is fast, PG is not so fast.
Me: With PG you can move much of the functionality INTO the database
using stored procedures, these stored procedures will run faster than
interpreted PHP, therefore taking the load away from the webserver.
MySQL User: But my Apache/MySQL can handle squillions of hits/queries
etc, PG probably couldn't. Do you know any sites that have a lot of
traffic that use PG.
Me: Ummmm... try the .org registry, I'm sure they have a reasonable
traffic load.
See http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/tim20001112.php3. Its a bit out of
data wrt both dbs (MySQL 3.23.26 and PostgreSQL 7.1) but hopefully it will
help dispel the FUD which MySQL AB have been spreading and living off for
years. Also check the archives for this list and the performance list. And
of course, the MySQL gotchas at http://sql-info.de/mysql is a must-read.
MySQL User: What project made you move to PG from MySQL
Me: The confusing licensing conditions when I wanted to write a
commercial app based on MySQL.
RedHat seem to be sufficently uneasy about MySQLs licensing to not ship
MySQL 4.x with Fedora. Instead they ship 3.23.58 whilst shipping
PostgreSQL 7.3.4 :)
For a commercial app, the issue of data integrity is paramount (hopefully
it would be a non-commercial app too!) and I, for one, would not be happy
to let my professional reputation be hostage to MySQL's gotchas. YMMV.
This completely killed all traffic on the channel for a minute or two,
while the cogs and gears whirred while people tried to Grock the concept
of OSS MySQL costing money to use in an application.
After this lengthy defense and answering many questions without the
slightest hesitation from me (and I'm new to PG), it made me realise why
I was thinking about a PostgreSQL for MySQL users paper.
Careful what you say - some people might think you're volunteering ;)
--
Paul Thomas
+------------------------------+---------------------------------------------+
| Thomas Micro Systems Limited | Software Solutions for the Smaller
Business |
| Computer Consultants | http://www.thomas-micro-systems-ltd.co.uk |
+------------------------------+---------------------------------------------+
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TIP 8: explain analyze is your friend
Tony (Sunday 28 December 2003 10:30) The native windows port is certainly useful for me.... when I was
developing for MySQL applications, I always ran a copy on my Windows
laptop which started as a service, and was most useful. I used to Rapid
Devel and prototype all of my DB apps this way.
In your shoes, I would probably tote along a compact linux machine running
PostgreSQL, and a crossover cable to connect it to the laptop.
You don't understand the mindset behind the *yapping* MySQL users
because you DO understand PostgreSQL, because you appear to judge other
people by your own standards, instead of saying to yourself "There but
for the Grace of PostgreSQL Go I"
Heh, no. The complaints I have about MySQL users are those of *ignorant*
MySQL users. I have a low tolerance of ignorance about *anything*. I would
be just as annoyed to hear somebody giving false excuses about PostgreSQL to
a MySQL user.
Try to understand that not everyone is blessed by your knowledge of PG,
or by your clarity of thought. It's easy to start throwing stones and
rocks at people, but I'm sure that we could all be criticised on our
choice of our software choices in one respect or another, since none of
us are beyond reproach, and we can't all be experts at everything.
I'm not trying to throw stones at all. I'm just saying that there's a lot of
effort involved in making a Windows port that could be better spent working
on general improvements, and that it is not a market that I think PostgreSQL
needs to tackle. MySQL may run on Windows, but how many people actually
choose MySQL over Microsoft SQL or some other commercial database? Not many.
How can you expect someone to understand why Nested Select staments are
good, if they ndo ot necessarilly understand what they might be good
for.
Forgive me for not clarifying...but I do explain exactly what I would use them
for, and the people who give me responses *know* why they're useful, because
they come up with a perfectly good alternative to use in MySQL (which works,
but isn't compliant to any standard but their own). Discussions like this
result from MySQL users trying to convert me to their platform, not the other
way around. I'm a believer in "use whatever you want". If you're
underinformed about your decision, that's your problem. Don't come forcing
it on me ;-).
1. They are blissfully ignorant of alternatives and don't know any better.
IMHO, these sorts of people don't need to be running PostgreSQL. If they've
got something they're happy with, more power to them. If they want to take
the blinders off and investigate alternatives, there's plenty of information
out there.
2. Don't have the ability to be productive with the alternatives or don't
have time to learn them (some people need to just use computers without
making them their lives)
Then they oughtn't be using the alternatives. These sorts of people should
use what they're used to. Why try to convert them to PostgreSQL from MySQL
if they're happy with it and resistant to change and learning?
3. Use laptops/PCs provided by a work environment and must use Windows/MySQL
because of Tools, Programs, Applications and don't have the option to
change.
And again, if their software is dictated by management and management has
given them MySQL, how is porting PostgreSQL to Windows going to help at all?
If anything, these three examples sound like reasons not to bother porting,
rather than encouragement to.
Zealotry is not good in any form, whether it's pro or anti MySQL, PG,
Windows or whatever. Shouting about how another religion is bad doesn't
make your point of view sound any less fanatical.
I agree completely. You'll note that I haven't said anything bad about MySQL
or Windows, even though I choose not to use either based on my own opinions..
What I have said is that porting PostgreSQL to Windows is an unwise time
investment, that open-source programs should focus on availability for
open-source platforms, and that people don't often run open-source databases
on Windows anyways (much more common is to see Access or Microsoft SQL). I
have stated the reasons *I* find PostgreSQL to be a better alternative to
MySQL, since that's the nature of this thread. I have *not* told you to go
and switch to it.
I think...you read my E-mail quite a bit differently than how I wrote it.
Vertu sæll,
--
Sigþór Björn Jarðarson (Casey Allen Shobe) http://rivyn.livejournal.com
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TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faqs/FAQ.html
I've asked this before and I'll apologize now if there was a response but how
does http://gborg.postgresql.org NOT fill this.
Quoting Chris Travers <ch***@travelamericas.com>: Hi all;
The problem with trying to maintain an image of unity is that PostgreSQL is
moving in a direction of being sort of like a kernel. In this sense, we
already are unified. But regarding new types, client libs, etc. then unity
is neither necessary nor desirable IMO.
If that is something that some people see here as important, maybe they can
start their own PostgreSQL "distributions." Maybe we can link to them via
the PostgreSQL advocacy site :-)
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Cramer" <pg@fastcrypt.com>
To: "Robert Treat" <xz****@users.sourceforge.net>
Cc: "Marc G. Fournier" <sc*****@postgresql.org>;
<pg***********@postgresql.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2003 5:31 AM
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Is my MySQL Gaining ?
Well, I'm not suggesting that we force them to do anything, just give
the appearance of unity, this should be possible with tools available,
no?
Dave
On Sat, 2003-12-27 at 16:57, Robert Treat wrote: But your examples also lists things like interface libraries. For
postgresql to do that, we would have to pick specific interfaces
applications / libraries, then have them all centralize their
development/release process around the main distribution. If you can get
everyone to agree to this (and I recommend starting by picking the
official python interface), we can start down a unified path, but I
don't see it happening.
Robert Treat
On Sat, 2003-12-27 at 09:41, Dave Cramer wrote:
> Regardless of the reasons, perception is reality. If we appear to be
> disheveled then we are.
>
> I would think that it should be possible to give the appearance of unity > without actually requiring a full time web-master?
>
>
> Dave
>
> On Fri, 2003-12-26 at 12:43, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> > On Fri, 26 Dec 2003, Dave Cramer wrote:
> >
> > > One thing that they do have over postgres is a unified experience, one > > > doesn't have to go to n different sites to find things, such as
> > > interface libraries, advocacy sites, development sites, etc.
> >
> > Course they don't ... cause they have one, full time, paid webmaster that > > has nothing else on his plate ... one advantage to being able to control > > everything is the ability to keep everything centralized ...
> >
> > >
> > > Dave
> > >
> > > On Fri, 2003-12-26 at 11:53, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> > > > On Fri, 26 Dec 2003, B. van Ouwerkerk wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > I think I will switch to PG anywhere soon but sometimes it's hard to > > > > > find whatever information I need. Google is a great help but I would > > > > > expect it in the docs.
> > > >
> > > > Like ... ?
> > > >
> > > > ----
> > > > Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) > > > > Email: sc*****@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664 > > > >
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--
Keith C. Perry, MS E.E.
Director of Networks & Applications
VCSN, Inc. http://vcsn.com
____________________________________
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TIP 8: explain analyze is your friend
Martijn van Oosterhout (Sunday 28 December 2003 04:56) Interesting, I found them in psql's manpage under ADVANCED FEATURES -
VARIABLES. Let's see if I can find it on the web... Here's a web version of
the manpage.
Ahh, I have seen those...but they're specific to psql, and if memory servesme
correct I wasn't able to use the variables within queries, either. I need
something I can use over ODBC (within a single transaction, of course).
These can sometimes solve problems that you can't seem to solve any other
way, and other times can improve query response time *greatly* (say, by
running a subquery once and assigning the result to a variable used 40 times
in the final statement instead of running 40 subqueries).
Take, for example, these query which I wrote in Transact-SQL for Microsoft
SQL. Yes, this was a horribly-formed database and the requests complex, but
it's something I had to deal with on a daily basis when I was still employed.
This example shows a scenario where I don't think I could even write the query
without the use of SQL variables: http://199.72.170.146/~sigthor/docum...mple_query.txt
This example shows a scenario where the variables are re-used. In this
example, changing the original query to use variables instead reduced query
execution time from 40 seconds to 2: http://199.72.170.146/~sigthor/docum...ple_query2.txt
(note for clarity that wherever [[blah]] appears in the SQL, this was replaced
by an actual value with PHP before execution)
So I guess my real question is, how can I address the same issues in
PostgreSQL?
Vertu sæll,
--
Sigþór Björn Jarðarson (Casey Allen Shobe) http://rivyn.livejournal.com
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Chris Travers (Sunday 28 December 2003 01:24) With 7.4, PostgreSQL implements the standard information_schema so that one
can essentially get all this information in a standard way with will
presumably not be brokent too much in future versions. Prior to this
release, you have to dig the information out of the system catelogs which
would periodically change.
Here are some examples (see the docs on the information schema ;-)
This rocks! Thank you for the information!
Another hint-- run psql -E to echo the queries to the screen, so that you
can see how the information is being requested from the system catalogs.
This is what I've always relied on...
WARNING: Using the system catalogs is NOT supported across versions, as
they tend to change from time to time. Use the information_schema instead
wherever possible :-)
And this is the problem I discovered the hard way ;-).
Vertu sæll,
--
Sigþór Björn Jarðarson (Casey Allen Shobe) http://rivyn.livejournal.com
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TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faqs/FAQ.html
Quoting Shridhar Daithankar <sh*****************@myrealbox.com>: On Sunday 28 December 2003 11:15, D. Dante Lorenso wrote: The only SQL customizations that MySQL has that I really miss in PostgreSQL are the commands:
SHOW DATABASES;
\l
SHOW TABLES;
\dt
DESC table;
\d tablename
That was ubber simple to do in MySQL. To this day, I have trouble with
that in PostgreSQL. I'm constantly doing:
psql> \?
psql> help;
ERROR: syntax error at or near "help" at character 1
psql> \h
...
* damnit, that's not it...*
psql> \?
psql> \d
* ok, now which flag do I use for tables vs functions..etc?*
\df for functions and \dt for tables.
Problem is psql is unique though very powerful. I need to use oracle's
sql-plus on HP-UX at times(Otherwise I crawl back to TOAD) and I don't think
it is nowhere near to psql.
or may be I play with postgresql more than oracle..:-) anyways
I finally figure it out, I just end up forgetting again later. I still
have no clue how I'd find the same data without using psql. In MySQL
I can run those queries from PHP, PERL...etc. I know you can find that
data in system tables in PostgreSQL, but I don't wanna muck around with
all that. I just wanna do something as simple as MySQL.
Well, actually I would say it is great way of learning postgresql internals.
There is a switch -E to psql which shows you queries sent to server for each
command you provide.
Problem with mysql is the approach is easy to start with but adding those
command in your standard list of SQL commands falls out on standard
compliance and maintainability.
Another post on this thread mentioned postgresql should run against oracle.
Sole reason postgresql v/s mysql debate should exist is to provide
comparision in feasibility study. The hurdles you mentioned are true but that
are just part of bit steeper learning curve of a standard way of doing
things..
Shridhar
This is what I don't get. Why do people thing learn PG is going to be like
learning MySQL in the first place? Because its OSS?? I certainly hope not.
This is apples to oranges.
I read someone say the documentation was "light" too. I'm not sure what that
meant but I looked for at the 3 inch doubled side binded of my 7.3.2 docs-
admin,user &,programmer- its as big as my J2EE binder.
Not very scientific I know :)
Seriously though, when people indicate PG is "hard", I hear, "if it was easy
everone would be doing it".
-$0.02
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Quoting Tony <to**@unihost.net>: Sadly a company will believe anything that a consultant they trust tells
them. Otherwise there'd be little point in hiring a consultant to give
them advice would there?
There are different levels of trust and in addition sometimes consultants are
used for feasibility studies- "how would you do this?" If you're telling me
you've never been in a situation where a client called you in because they want
to implement a project with certain products or other specification because they
have "done the research and want to proceed this way" then I'm very glad to hear
that. No matter how much you are trusted as a consultant or technical advisor
you are still just a guide. That means it is possible for your client is "wander
off the path". I remember in the not so long ago days when people wanted to run
certain hardware or software because to not do so would give the perception that
you were not up to par. Sometimes what is used has nothing to do with using the
best product for the job. That seems to be a sub-text of this thread.
It seems rather illogical that you'd refuse to work with a company that
had been given potentially sub-standard advice, based on what appears to
be a theological view?
I'm sure the MySQL folks don't think they are sub-standard. A fair amount of my
business is "clean up" so if someone said, "we have an app on MySQL that is not
working for us" I would most definitely be interested. If someone said to me
what DB do I use to build applications, I would say PG. If then someone says to
me that "well we're a MySQL shop" then I would have to hear more because
depending on what they want to do, I might not take on that project. There is
nothing illogical or theological in that.
Either that or you have more consulting work than you know what to do
with, that you can afford to base business decisions on an ideological
basis.
This really doesn't make sense. Are you telling me you are going to accept any
an all work regardless of competency and confidence in that product? Would you
really build a financial application on MySQL? We both know that we all have a
certain ideology (read: religion) when it comes to our trade. To be clear, I'm
not saying anything against someone who would use MySQL for a financial app.
I'm just saying that I would not (or at least try very hard not to) involve
myself in that project or any other project where I thought there was a bad
design or implementation.
When you are a smaller operation your reputation is going to weigh in a lot more
than a larger company. I do not want my name to be tied to something
sub-standard. If a consultant values his or her reputation I don't see how you
can NOT consider what products you are willing to put your name on the line for.
If I chose not to work with companies that used Windows as servers
(because IMHO, Windows is not a good server environment) my house
would've been repossessed, and I'd have probably starved by now.
T.
12 years ago calling myself a consultant one day meant putting in a netware 3.11
server for a bunch of PCs and MACs and pulling coax. Did I want to do that- I
can't really say because at the time I had to eat. That for me is on the outer
fringes of this thread. Few organzations are NOT using Windows somewhere, and
an increasing number of organizations are starting understand OSS solutions. So
both world are merging so it not about avoiding and one thing. Its about
picking an choosing your battles.
Keith C. Perry wrote:
The way I look at it is that I probably don't want to deal with a
company that thinks that MySQL on windows is "good environment".
--
Keith C. Perry, MS E.E.
Director of Networks & Applications
VCSN, Inc. http://vcsn.com
____________________________________
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Quoting Gaetano Mendola <me*****@bigfoot.com>: Chris Travers wrote: Regarding the importance of PostgreSQL on Windows.
For example, I am developing a hotel reservation management application
using Python and PostgreSQL (http://sourceforge.net/projects/openres). This will only run on Linux and UNIX, so in order to get this to run on
Windows, I need to use either MySQL or Firebird. Or aI can require Cygwin. But
that is a bit over the top IMO, for a small hotel or B&B to consider,
especially because I want to run it if possible on existing equipment to keep
implimentation costs down.
Who cares about where the GUI must run?
Chris and his client-
May you please explain me why the GUI must be on the same DB server?
After all is better have the user's hand far away from the datas.
If its a small hotel or B&B I would think an addtional workstation might be cost
prohibitive. Then again, that might simply be the way they want it.
Regards
Gaetano Mendola
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On Sun, Dec 28, 2003 at 12:57:10PM -0500, Casey Allen Shobe wrote: Martijn van Oosterhout (Sunday 28 December 2003 04:56) Interesting, I found them in psql's manpage under ADVANCED FEATURES -
VARIABLES. Let's see if I can find it on the web... Here's a web version of
the manpage.
Ahh, I have seen those...but they're specific to psql, and if memory serves me
correct I wasn't able to use the variables within queries, either. I need
something I can use over ODBC (within a single transaction, of course).
These can sometimes solve problems that you can't seem to solve any other
way, and other times can improve query response time *greatly* (say, by
running a subquery once and assigning the result to a variable used 40 times
in the final statement instead of running 40 subqueries).
Ah, I see what you mean. The psql ones can be used in queries, as long as
it's not inside a string (eg function body IIRC).
kleptog=# \set var 31
kleptog=# select :var;
?column?
----------
31
(1 row)
<examples> http://199.72.170.146/~sigthor/docum...mple_query.txt
http://199.72.170.146/~sigthor/docum...ple_query2.txt
Aah, right. In those situations I tend to use temp tables myself. For
example, I have some programs which run a bit like:
select into temp month month from <rest of SQL statement>
select <really complicated SQL that references month.month>
Unfortunatly recent versions of Postgres tend to complain about missing
tables in FROM clause which is mildly irritating, since they're not really
tables from my point of view. Also, sometimes you need to run a quick
analyze over the table to give the planner the right hints.
Not ideal I'll grant you. In some ways some syntactic sugar would be nice.
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kl*****@svana.org> http://svana.org/kleptog/ (... have gone from d-i being barely usable even by its developers
anywhere, to being about 20% done. Sweet. And the last 80% usually takes
20% of the time, too, right?) -- Anthony Towns, debian-devel-announce
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I was thinking more along the lines of a company that said "Hey, we've
got a core app on MySQL which is running like a bag of bolts, can you
come and troubleshoot it for us." A company quite rightly would get a
little edgy with someone saying sorry guys, it's new DB time. You'd
want to go and work with them and help them to move in the right direction.
Keith C. Perry wrote: Quoting Tony <to**@unihost.net>:
Sadly a company will believe anything that a consultant they trust tells
them. Otherwise there'd be little point in hiring a consultant to give
them advice would there?
There are different levels of trust and in addition sometimes consultants are
used for feasibility studies- "how would you do this?" If you're telling me
you've never been in a situation where a client called you in because they want
to implement a project with certain products or other specification because they
have "done the research and want to proceed this way" then I'm very glad to hear
that. No matter how much you are trusted as a consultant or technical advisor
you are still just a guide. That means it is possible for your client is "wander
off the path". I remember in the not so long ago days when people wanted to run
certain hardware or software because to not do so would give the perception that
you were not up to par. Sometimes what is used has nothing to do with using the
best product for the job. That seems to be a sub-text of this thread.
Exactly!! I've been in a position where no matter how hard Linux has
been rationalised as the right solution for a job, the management and
board have been Windows Marketed, and refuse to go any other way. I've
also been at companies where the entire global operation was a Novell
shop looking at an upgrade bill well into the high 7 digits, when MS
came along and said well give you the OSs for free if you migrate. You
just can't factor in for situations like that. Although some companies,
like one I have just worked for, have no technical in house ability at
all and listened to a reputable consultant, who didn't necessarilly make
the right decisions. The company certainly didn't have anyone within to
checkup on the consultant with their own research. These tend to be
smaller companies with smaller budgets, staff number in double digits
with 7 figure turnovers, these smaller companies are typically my normal
client. They've often been given advice which wasn't exactly long term
advice. My name seems to be getting thrown around as a trouble
shooter/fixer. I'd like the opportunity to get in on the ground floor
of fresh projects, but sadly have not reached that reputable stage yet.
It seems rather illogical that you'd refuse to work with a company that
had been given potentially sub-standard advice, based on what appears to
be a theological view?
I'm sure the MySQL folks don't think they are sub-standard. A fair amount of my
business is "clean up" so if someone said, "we have an app on MySQL that is not
working for us" I would most definitely be interested. If someone said to me
what DB do I use to build applications, I would say PG. If then someone says to
me that "well we're a MySQL shop" then I would have to hear more because
depending on what they want to do, I might not take on that project. There is
nothing illogical or theological in that.
Absolutely nothing wrong with that. Apologies as that's not how I
interpreted your email. My bad on that.
Either that or you have more consulting work than you know what to do
with, that you can afford to base business decisions on an ideological
basis.
This really doesn't make sense. Are you telling me you are going to accept any
an all work regardless of competency and confidence in that product? Would you
really build a financial application on MySQL? We both know that we all have a
certain ideology (read: religion) when it comes to our trade. To be clear, I'm
not saying anything against someone who would use MySQL for a financial app.
I'm just saying that I would not (or at least try very hard not to) involve
myself in that project or any other project where I thought there was a bad
design or implementation.
To a certian extend you're right although if I had something useful to
offer to the project, I'd certainly want to be there when (inevitably)
someone (MySQL) dropped the ball and make sure PG was right there to
pick up the pieces. I certainly don't have a religion though, I always
try to use the right tool for the job at hand. The bad thing about many
advocates in the OS environment is that they have the Linux hammer, and
everything they see tends to look like a nail. This is also true for
MySQL and many other projects.
When you are a smaller operation your reputation is going to weigh in a lot more
than a larger company. I do not want my name to be tied to something
sub-standard. If a consultant values his or her reputation I don't see how you
can NOT consider what products you are willing to put your name on the line for.
Agreed, but MySQL is not bad for everything, like all software it has a
place in the great scheme of things. IMHO it's a perfect way to get your
feet wet in the RDBMS world, it's the next step up from Paradox, Access,
etc. How many key applications in a even a large company have you seen
using Access, it's natural project sprawl.
If I chose not to work with companies that used Windows as servers
(because IMHO, Windows is not a good server environment) my house
would've been repossessed, and I'd have probably starved by now.
T.
12 years ago calling myself a consultant one day meant putting in a netware 3.11
server for a bunch of PCs and MACs and pulling coax. Did I want to do that- I
can't really say because at the time I had to eat. That for me is on the outer
fringes of this thread. Few organzations are NOT using Windows somewhere, and
an increasing number of organizations are starting understand OSS solutions. So
both world are merging so it not about avoiding and one thing. Its about
picking an choosing your battles.
Keith C. Perry wrote:
The way I look at it is that I probably don't want to deal with a
company that thinks that MySQL on windows is "good environment".
Alas, it's one of the biggest shortcomings of email. My apologies for
grasping the wrong end of the stick.
All of your points are valid, but there is always room for a larger
user community, especially in one that is almost entirely voluntary.
It's OK to be aloof and niche, Debian has done just fine by it, in very
many ways it far superior to Mandrake, Redhat, and many many others (I
use it myself on all of my servers) but it doesn't excel in terms of
accessability to the novice or even intermediate Linux users. Visit the
#debian channel, and most of the people there will help you a great deal
until they get bored with your newbieness and start sighing and telling
you to RTFM. There is always a hardcore of advanced users however who
will always help as far as they can, as long as they are Debian related
Q's (I don't think anyone would be interested in "How do I use ftp" type
Q's), a very similar story is true of the perl community (nothing
personal Randall). I see very many parallels in all the advanced OS
software and there are elements of this in PostgreSQL community, whilst
the PG people in general are not quite as aloof as the Debian crowd,
there are definite undertones of "Hey, If you're not good enough to
appreciate us, then Tough Poopie to you!"
This was very much how the Linux community was seen for the longest
time, fortunately due to some vary hard advocacy work by some very
dedicated people and talent programmers working hard on accessibility
issues, Linux itself is now (mostly) far more accessible to many more
people. I never expected to see so many people talking about Linux on
the desktop so soon.
The main point I'm trying to hit, is this how PostgreSQL community
chooses to be viewed, or do they want to become a little more warm and
fuzzy and have journalists cooing over PG. Either choice is a double
edged sword.
Those who can RTFM nearly always will, the others will probably use
MySQL instead and get spoonfed by a more accessible piece of software
that also runs on Windows.
I'm trying to provoke thought rather than conflict here. Where does PG
community see its place in the big picture?
Regards
T.
PostgreSQL, Putting the .org into your Organization.
========
Casey Allen Shobe wrote: Tony (Sunday 28 December 2003 10:30)
I think...you read my E-mail quite a bit differently than how I wrote it.
Vertu sæll,
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Keith C. Perry wrote: Quoting Gaetano Mendola <me*****@bigfoot.com>: May you please explain me why the GUI must be on the same DB server?
After all is better have the user's hand far away from the datas.
If its a small hotel or B&B I would think an addtional workstation might be cost
prohibitive. Then again, that might simply be the way they want it.
Cost prohibitive ?
So you mean that put the DB and the GUI on the same
Windows workstation is less expensive that leave the GUI on a windows
system and the DB on a *nix box.
Your client is aware of about much cost loose his datas ?
I repeat again: "Don't put your DB host under the hand of the
final user" don't mentioning the fact that the host is a windows host!
Regards
Gaetano Mendola
Keith,
In principal it can, however lets say that I am a complete newbie to
postgres and I want to use my favourite interface odbc, jdbc, .... etc.
So I download the source tarball and build it, then I goto find my
interface ... and it isn't there ( in all fairness jdbc is still there
but that won't be true shortly )
The same is true for most tools; psql being the exception
Now what do I do, I have to hunt around for the tools looking through a
myriad of projects on gborg, go to the lists etc.
Admittedly this deterrent won't stop a determined newbie from finding
what they are after, but I'm sure there are some folk who would just
assume that postgres is deficient in this area. Note some previous posts
from others which demonstrates my point. http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql...2/msg01358.php
This gentleman finally found pgadmin III which solved his problem. But
I'm sure he had to look for it.
Dave
On Sun, 2003-12-28 at 13:00, Keith C. Perry wrote: I've asked this before and I'll apologize now if there was a response but how
does http://gborg.postgresql.org NOT fill this.
Quoting Chris Travers <ch***@travelamericas.com>:
Hi all;
The problem with trying to maintain an image of unity is that PostgreSQL is
moving in a direction of being sort of like a kernel. In this sense, we
already are unified. But regarding new types, client libs, etc. then unity
is neither necessary nor desirable IMO.
If that is something that some people see here as important, maybe they can
start their own PostgreSQL "distributions." Maybe we can link to them via
the PostgreSQL advocacy site :-)
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Cramer" <pg@fastcrypt.com>
To: "Robert Treat" <xz****@users.sourceforge.net>
Cc: "Marc G. Fournier" <sc*****@postgresql.org>;
<pg***********@postgresql.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2003 5:31 AM
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Is my MySQL Gaining ?
Well, I'm not suggesting that we force them to do anything, just give
the appearance of unity, this should be possible with tools available,
no?
Dave
On Sat, 2003-12-27 at 16:57, Robert Treat wrote:
> But your examples also lists things like interface libraries. For
> postgresql to do that, we would have to pick specific interfaces
> applications / libraries, then have them all centralize their
> development/release process around the main distribution. If you can get
> everyone to agree to this (and I recommend starting by picking the
> official python interface), we can start down a unified path, but I
> don't see it happening.
>
> Robert Treat
>
> On Sat, 2003-12-27 at 09:41, Dave Cramer wrote:
> > Regardless of the reasons, perception is reality. If we appear to be
> > disheveled then we are.
> >
> > I would think that it should be possible to give the appearance of
unity > > without actually requiring a full time web-master?
> >
> >
> > Dave
> >
> > On Fri, 2003-12-26 at 12:43, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> > > On Fri, 26 Dec 2003, Dave Cramer wrote:
> > >
> > > > One thing that they do have over postgres is a unified experience,
one > > > > doesn't have to go to n different sites to find things, such as
> > > > interface libraries, advocacy sites, development sites, etc.
> > >
> > > Course they don't ... cause they have one, full time, paid webmaster
that > > > has nothing else on his plate ... one advantage to being able to
control > > > everything is the ability to keep everything centralized ...
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Dave
> > > >
> > > > On Fri, 2003-12-26 at 11:53, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> > > > > On Fri, 26 Dec 2003, B. van Ouwerkerk wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > I think I will switch to PG anywhere soon but sometimes it's
hard to > > > > > > find whatever information I need. Google is a great help but I
would > > > > > > expect it in the docs.
> > > > >
> > > > > Like ... ?
> > > > >
> > > > > ----
> > > > > Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services
(http://www.hub.org) > > > > > Email: sc*****@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy
ICQ: 7615664 > > > > >
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Quoting Tony <to**@unihost.net>: I was thinking more along the lines of a company that said "Hey, we've
got a core app on MySQL which is running like a bag of bolts, can you
come and troubleshoot it for us." A company quite rightly would get a
little edgy with someone saying sorry guys, it's new DB time. You'd
want to go and work with them and help them to move in the right direction.
Ahh- that is definitely the type of thing we do.
Keith C. Perry wrote:
Quoting Tony <to**@unihost.net>:
Sadly a company will believe anything that a consultant they trust tells
them. Otherwise there'd be little point in hiring a consultant to give
them advice would there?
There are different levels of trust and in addition sometimes consultants
areused for feasibility studies- "how would you do this?" If you're telling
meyou've never been in a situation where a client called you in because they
wantto implement a project with certain products or other specification because
theyhave "done the research and want to proceed this way" then I'm very glad to
hearthat. No matter how much you are trusted as a consultant or technical
advisoryou are still just a guide. That means it is possible for your client is
"wanderoff the path". I remember in the not so long ago days when people wanted to
runcertain hardware or software because to not do so would give the perception
thatyou were not up to par. Sometimes what is used has nothing to do with using
thebest product for the job. That seems to be a sub-text of this thread.
Exactly!! I've been in a position where no matter how hard Linux has
been rationalised as the right solution for a job, the management and
board have been Windows Marketed, and refuse to go any other way. I've
also been at companies where the entire global operation was a Novell
shop looking at an upgrade bill well into the high 7 digits, when MS
came along and said well give you the OSs for free if you migrate. You
just can't factor in for situations like that. Although some companies,
like one I have just worked for, have no technical in house ability at
all and listened to a reputable consultant, who didn't necessarilly make
the right decisions. The company certainly didn't have anyone within to
checkup on the consultant with their own research. These tend to be
smaller companies with smaller budgets, staff number in double digits
with 7 figure turnovers, these smaller companies are typically my normal
client. They've often been given advice which wasn't exactly long term
advice. My name seems to be getting thrown around as a trouble
shooter/fixer. I'd like the opportunity to get in on the ground floor
of fresh projects, but sadly have not reached that reputable stage yet.
*nod* I feel you there. But there is really nothing you can do about that
though. I do a lot of clean ups and a number of ground up and migration
products. I tell you this tho- same thing I used to tell my students when I was
teaching- you **really** earn your rep on the clean up side of things. Ground
up will do that but in this field its the maintanance that is more imporatant.
If you can support what you've done or management the growth of your application
your in trouble- like you said "long term". I've seen consultant names talked
about for years because of how *bad* their design was too. If you've got a good
rep now for clean-up, it only a matter of time before someone says, "well lets
go with Tony 'cause he going to do it right the first time".
It seems rather illogical that you'd refuse to work with a company that
had been given potentially sub-standard advice, based on what appears to
be a theological view?
I'm sure the MySQL folks don't think they are sub-standard. A fair amount
of mybusiness is "clean up" so if someone said, "we have an app on MySQL that is
notworking for us" I would most definitely be interested. If someone said to
mewhat DB do I use to build applications, I would say PG. If then someone
says to me that "well we're a MySQL shop" then I would have to hear more because
depending on what they want to do, I might not take on that project. There
isnothing illogical or theological in that.
Absolutely nothing wrong with that. Apologies as that's not how I
interpreted your email. My bad on that.
No prob :)
Either that or you have more consulting work than you know what to do
with, that you can afford to base business decisions on an ideological
basis.
This really doesn't make sense. Are you telling me you are going to accept
anyan all work regardless of competency and confidence in that product? Would
youreally build a financial application on MySQL? We both know that we all
have acertain ideology (read: religion) when it comes to our trade. To be clear,
I'mnot saying anything against someone who would use MySQL for a financial app.
I'm just saying that I would not (or at least try very hard not to) involve
myself in that project or any other project where I thought there was a bad
design or implementation.
To a certian extend you're right although if I had something useful to
offer to the project, I'd certainly want to be there when (inevitably)
someone (MySQL) dropped the ball and make sure PG was right there to
pick up the pieces. I certainly don't have a religion though, I always
try to use the right tool for the job at hand. The bad thing about many
advocates in the OS environment is that they have the Linux hammer, and
everything they see tends to look like a nail. This is also true for
MySQL and many other projects.
Heheh, ok, I see your point. I gotta admit a good number of my Linux
implementations (and OSS) in general have come out of the fact that other
solutions have failed. Sometimes thats frustration because you feel like saying
"I told you so" but in the end whats good for OS is good for OS regardless of
when it happens. Damn that father time! *laff* When you are a smaller operation your reputation is going to weigh in a lot
morethan a larger company. I do not want my name to be tied to something
sub-standard. If a consultant values his or her reputation I don't see how
you can NOT consider what products you are willing to put your name on the line
for.
Agreed, but MySQL is not bad for everything, like all software it has a
place in the great scheme of things. IMHO it's a perfect way to get your
feet wet in the RDBMS world, it's the next step up from Paradox, Access,
etc. How many key applications in a even a large company have you seen
using Access, it's natural project sprawl.
Hehe, yea those infamous Access "Apps".
Even though I use PG for everything, I know that MySQL is probably fine for most
web site servering up what I would call "lightweight dynamic content". My
experience has taught me that most organizations will grow fairly quickly to the
point of needing something on the level with PG. So, you can do it now
"properly" (with PG or something similar) or migrate it later (MySQL, Access, et
al). If someone really wanted MySQL for something "light", I'm pretty sure I
would not have a problem putting someone on that project. What I would not do
is commit a consultant to something that has all the markings of being a bear to
deploy and maintain.
If I chose not to work with companies that used Windows as servers
(because IMHO, Windows is not a good server environment) my house
would've been repossessed, and I'd have probably starved by now.
T.
12 years ago calling myself a consultant one day meant putting in a netware
3.11server for a bunch of PCs and MACs and pulling coax. Did I want to do that-
Ican't really say because at the time I had to eat. That for me is on the
outerfringes of this thread. Few organzations are NOT using Windows somewhere,
andan increasing number of organizations are starting understand OSS solutions.
Soboth world are merging so it not about avoiding and one thing. Its about
picking an choosing your battles.
Keith C. Perry wrote:
The way I look at it is that I probably don't want to deal with a
company that thinks that MySQL on windows is "good environment".
--
Keith C. Perry, MS E.E.
Director of Networks & Applications
VCSN, Inc. http://vcsn.com
____________________________________
This email account is being host by:
VCSN, Inc : http://vcsn.com
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Quoting Dave Cramer <pg@fastcrypt.com>: Keith,
In principal it can, however lets say that I am a complete newbie to
postgres and I want to use my favourite interface odbc, jdbc, .... etc.
So I download the source tarball and build it, then I goto find my
interface ... and it isn't there ( in all fairness jdbc is still there
but that won't be true shortly )
The same is true for most tools; psql being the exception
Now what do I do, I have to hunt around for the tools looking through a
myriad of projects on gborg, go to the lists etc.
The current README (well the 7.4 one) could do a better job of saying that gborg
is where you should look for links for all things PG. I wouldn't say that you
have to "hunt" for things though.
Admittedly this deterrent won't stop a determined newbie from finding
what they are after, but I'm sure there are some folk who would just
assume that postgres is deficient in this area. Note some previous posts
from others which demonstrates my point.
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql...2/msg01358.php
This gentleman finally found pgadmin III which solved his problem. But
I'm sure he had to look for it.
Short of the README file with the source release and reorganizing the web site.
I don't see what else could be done. I sincerely hope we're not going the path
of MS and trying to make things "idiot proof". PostgreSQL is robust complex
product and at a certain point I would think the powers that be would have to
say enough is enough as it relates to trying to make things easy.
On a side note though, I did try to search of "php interface" (something I know
nothing about as it relates to PG) from the search link on the main website and
I had to cancel it because it never returned anything after several minutes.
That definitely would be frustrating to a new/prospective user.
Dave
On Sun, 2003-12-28 at 13:00, Keith C. Perry wrote: I've asked this before and I'll apologize now if there was a response but
how does http://gborg.postgresql.org NOT fill this.
Quoting Chris Travers <ch***@travelamericas.com>:
Hi all;
The problem with trying to maintain an image of unity is that PostgreSQL is moving in a direction of being sort of like a kernel. In this sense, we
already are unified. But regarding new types, client libs, etc. then unity is neither necessary nor desirable IMO.
If that is something that some people see here as important, maybe they can start their own PostgreSQL "distributions." Maybe we can link to them via the PostgreSQL advocacy site :-)
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Cramer" <pg@fastcrypt.com>
To: "Robert Treat" <xz****@users.sourceforge.net>
Cc: "Marc G. Fournier" <sc*****@postgresql.org>;
<pg***********@postgresql.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2003 5:31 AM
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Is my MySQL Gaining ?
> Well, I'm not suggesting that we force them to do anything, just give
> the appearance of unity, this should be possible with tools available,
> no?
>
> Dave
> On Sat, 2003-12-27 at 16:57, Robert Treat wrote:
> > But your examples also lists things like interface libraries. For
> > postgresql to do that, we would have to pick specific interfaces
> > applications / libraries, then have them all centralize their
> > development/release process around the main distribution. If you can get > > everyone to agree to this (and I recommend starting by picking the
> > official python interface), we can start down a unified path, but I
> > don't see it happening.
> >
> > Robert Treat
> >
> > On Sat, 2003-12-27 at 09:41, Dave Cramer wrote:
> > > Regardless of the reasons, perception is reality. If we appear to be > > > disheveled then we are.
> > >
> > > I would think that it should be possible to give the appearance of
unity
> > > without actually requiring a full time web-master?
> > >
> > >
> > > Dave
> > >
> > > On Fri, 2003-12-26 at 12:43, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> > > > On Fri, 26 Dec 2003, Dave Cramer wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > One thing that they do have over postgres is a unified experience, one
> > > > > doesn't have to go to n different sites to find things, such as > > > > > interface libraries, advocacy sites, development sites, etc.
> > > >
> > > > Course they don't ... cause they have one, full time, paid webmaster that
> > > > has nothing else on his plate ... one advantage to being able to
control
> > > > everything is the ability to keep everything centralized ...
> > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Dave
> > > > >
> > > > > On Fri, 2003-12-26 at 11:53, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> > > > > > On Fri, 26 Dec 2003, B. van Ouwerkerk wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > I think I will switch to PG anywhere soon but sometimes it's hard to
> > > > > > > find whatever information I need. Google is a great help but I would
> > > > > > > expect it in the docs.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Like ... ?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > ----
> > > > > > Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services
(http://www.hub.org)
> > > > > > Email: sc*****@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy
ICQ: 7615664
> > > > > >
>
>
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>
>
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--
Keith C. Perry, MS E.E.
Director of Networks & Applications
VCSN, Inc. http://vcsn.com
____________________________________
This email account is being host by:
VCSN, Inc : http://vcsn.com
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Keith C. Perry (Sunday 28 December 2003 17:55) This gentleman finally found pgadmin III which solved his problem. But
I'm sure he had to look for it.
Short of the README file with the source release and reorganizing the web
site. I don't see what else could be done. I sincerely hope we're not
going the path of MS and trying to make things "idiot proof". PostgreSQL
is robust complex product and at a certain point I would think the powers
that be would have to say enough is enough as it relates to trying to make
things easy.
I think that a combined package of PostgreSQL and pgAdmin III should be
available.
Vertu sæll,
--
Sigþór Björn Jarðarson (Casey Allen Shobe) http://rivyn.livejournal.com
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The example I gave was one where my app was designed to replace the old way
of doing things (in this case excel). Replacing an Excel spreadsheet with a
database-driven appliation is one area where you have no additional risk of
information loss when you are running any RDBMS on the system.
Also, here in Indonesia, most of these B&B's charge less than $30/night.
Purchasing a new system (often $700 or more) is the equivalent of 23
room-nights (for a place which typically has fewer than 10 rooms). Used
PC's are out of the question because usually they have hardware issues, and
so the cost savings would be marginal.
Please remember that the economic tradeoff of whether to buy an additional
system varies quite a bit around the world. For this reason, I decided to
build my application to be platform and database agnostic, supporting both
Firebird and PostgreSQL.
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
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TIP 9: the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your
joining column's datatypes do not match
The other problem though is that I might want to SET the variable from a
query result. Is there any way I can do that within psql?
For example, something that would allow me to run a query, set the variable
from the query result and then use that variable in another set of queries.
This would drastically help on maintaining upgrade scripts for my db's.
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
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Casey Allen Shobe wrote: I think that a combined package of PostgreSQL and pgAdmin III should be
available.
Just convince your distribution's postgresql package maintainer to add
pgadmin iii to the "suggests/recommends" portion of the package
management metadata.
Alex
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TIP 7: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
On Sun, Dec 28, 2003 at 12:57:10 -0500,
Casey Allen Shobe <cs****@softhome.net> wrote:
Ahh, I have seen those...but they're specific to psql, and if memory serves me
correct I wasn't able to use the variables within queries, either. I need
something I can use over ODBC (within a single transaction, of course).
These can sometimes solve problems that you can't seem to solve any other
way, and other times can improve query response time *greatly* (say, by
running a subquery once and assigning the result to a variable used 40 times
in the final statement instead of running 40 subqueries).
You should be handle to this case by using the subselect query in the from
clause and then doing a join to make the value available where needed.
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Shridhar Daithankar <sh*****************@myrealbox.com> writes: That is right. but that fact remains that postgresql documentation is just
sufficient. If you read the manual and follow it religously to comma and
fullstop, it tells you everythings. But it certainly isn't a place where you
can glance over it and get hang of it.
This is surely true, and I've not seen anyone denying it. The people
who are doing development are, um, not strong at documentation (I
include myself here). What we need are some folks to step up and
improve the documentation --- and then maintain it in the face of future
changes. Any volunteers out there? This is an open-source project
after all, and that means "scratch your own itch" among other things...
regards, tom lane
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
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Chris Travers wrote: The example I gave was one where my app was designed to replace the old way
of doing things (in this case excel). Replacing an Excel spreadsheet with a
database-driven appliation is one area where you have no additional risk of
information loss when you are running any RDBMS on the system.
Also, here in Indonesia, most of these B&B's charge less than $30/night.
Purchasing a new system (often $700 or more) is the equivalent of 23
room-nights (for a place which typically has fewer than 10 rooms). Used
PC's are out of the question because usually they have hardware issues, and
so the cost savings would be marginal.
Please remember that the economic tradeoff of whether to buy an additional
system varies quite a bit around the world. For this reason, I decided to
build my application to be platform and database agnostic, supporting both
Firebird and PostgreSQL.
So one more reason to buy cheap hardware and avoid to pay M$ licenses or
not ?
Regards
Gaetano Mendola
I agree with you (speaking as a newbie) I don't believe any dumbing down
is necessary at all. I DO believe however that a decent introduction to
the more important concepts (Triggers, Fkeys, Stored Proc, Views) that
people from lesser systems (MySQL, Access) may not be familiar with.
What they do, how they help, and why they are generally a good thing.
This intro would probably fit either in the tutorial or in the User Guide.
Don't hold peoples hand for them, but at least provide them with the
tools they need to make an educated decision.
T.
Shridhar Daithankar wrote: On Monday 29 December 2003 12:47, Tom Lane wrote:
Shridhar Daithankar <sh*****************@myrealbox.com> writes:
That is right. but that fact remains that postgresql documentation is
just sufficient. If you read the manual and follow it religously to comma
and fullstop, it tells you everythings. But it certainly isn't a place
where you can glance over it and get hang of it.
This is surely true, and I've not seen anyone denying it. The people
Well, for newbies to postgresql, let's state this fact upfront and not make
them discover it..:-)
who are doing development are, um, not strong at documentation (I
include myself here). What we need are some folks to step up and
improve the documentation --- and then maintain it in the face of future
changes. Any volunteers out there? This is an open-source project
after all, and that means "scratch your own itch" among other things...
If you ask me, let's not do that. Not at least on a grand scale. Isolated
areas are OK on case by case basis..
I regualrly use development build documentation from developers.postgresql.org
and I have seen the documentation in source code. In my view, postgresql
developers do document it very clearly whenever required.
If we dilute the documentation too much, that will make things simpler
initially but that will simply create a maintainance nightmare as one has to
maintain much larger amount of documentation.
And once you get used to precise style of postgresql documentation, going back
to anything else is a pain. ( MSDN.. I scream at nights.... but I digress).
IMO documentation of postgresql is fine overall. What we need to do is.
1. State upfront that this is not handholding.
It will make lots of things easier and offload work of expanding documents
given limited human resources working on the project. A disclaimer is far
easier to maintain than a manual..:-)
And it will prepare anybody for upcoming hardships..:-)
2. Document and reuse it.
Personally I would like to see responses on general and oter such list as
URLs. If we answer it repeatedly, let's document it and point the people to
them. Let them dig around 3-4 URLs around it and they will have islands of
enlightenments. Over the period, these island will merge in a great
landscape..:-)
Just a thought..
Shridhar
P.S. If somebody thinks I can not imagine how a newbie feels, I will agree.
But looking back, dumbing down anything is not good in long term..an
experience that is
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to ma*******@postgresql.org
By that logic then, we can probably ditch the PG Tutorial altogether and
provide a quick ref card of PG commands and keywords, with a few pages
on how PG is different should be plenty.
The bisggest problem that I faced when moving to PG was the complete
lack of any cetralised information source for this information. Sure
there are tutorials on the web, first track them down, then convert
their use to PG then collate them, then make some sense of it all.
This is the kind of aloofness that I have mentioned previously, just
because it doesn't belong, doesn't mean it's not needed, and it only
needs to be written once. Although I know some of the concepts and I'm
beginning to grock them, I'm still trying to collate enough to satisfy
my needs.
Assuming yo *do* want to grow the PG community and attract people from
other systems, the easier the transition for them, the less likely they
are to look elsewhere for something that appears easier. Easier
doesn't always mean easier to use, sometimes it can mean easier to get
to grips with.
T.
Shridhar Daithankar wrote: For one thing, these thing do not belong to postgresql documentation.
But I don't believe there is shortage of material on these topics on web and
in print.
However if you are refering to explaining these things, w.r.t. postgresql, I
would be more than happy to churn out some extremely basic tutorials.
Can you tell us what all you need? Rephrasing, if you know these(and some
other) concpets by now, what all you missed while learning postgresql?
It may sound like stupid question but unlearning things out of imagination is
not easy...:-)
Shridhar
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I agree with most of this sentiment. Even knowing SQL and RDBMs reasonably
well, there is still a significant effort involved in moving from another
RDBMS (in my case Oracle) to postgres.
The postgres docs provide much all the detail (in a very concise form).
The hard part is putting all the different pieces together to solve some
problem. In fact, this is where the postgres users list is so good,
because the support and feedback from it is excellent.
Contrast this page from the docs (for the update statement), http://www.postgres.org/docs/current...ql-update.html with
Oracle's (for 8.1.7) http://download-west.oracle.com/docs...7a.htm#2067717
Some might feel that much of the information is redundant or bloat. I
disagree - you get a feel for what is possible as well as links to other
commands, subtopics, and concept explanations.
Someone commented that maintaining docs (of this sort) would be too hard -
I disagree. Many of the commands are *mostly* implementation agnostic, and
the initial docs would require siginificant effort to build, but should
only require moderate maintenance as features are added or modified.
Just my two cents (again).
John Sidney-Woollett
ps And yes, I would be willing to help once my current project is complete...
Tony said: By that logic then, we can probably ditch the PG Tutorial altogether and
provide a quick ref card of PG commands and keywords, with a few pages
on how PG is different should be plenty.
The bisggest problem that I faced when moving to PG was the complete
lack of any cetralised information source for this information. Sure
there are tutorials on the web, first track them down, then convert
their use to PG then collate them, then make some sense of it all.
This is the kind of aloofness that I have mentioned previously, just
because it doesn't belong, doesn't mean it's not needed, and it only
needs to be written once. Although I know some of the concepts and I'm
beginning to grock them, I'm still trying to collate enough to satisfy
my needs.
Assuming yo *do* want to grow the PG community and attract people from
other systems, the easier the transition for them, the less likely they
are to look elsewhere for something that appears easier. Easier
doesn't always mean easier to use, sometimes it can mean easier to get
to grips with.
T.
Shridhar Daithankar wrote:
For one thing, these thing do not belong to postgresql documentation.
But I don't believe there is shortage of material on these topics on web
and
in print.
However if you are refering to explaining these things, w.r.t.
postgresql, I
would be more than happy to churn out some extremely basic tutorials.
Can you tell us what all you need? Rephrasing, if you know these(and some
other) concpets by now, what all you missed while learning postgresql?
It may sound like stupid question but unlearning things out of
imagination is
not easy...:-)
Shridhar
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 7: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate
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Apologies, try this link instead: http://miami.int.gu.edu.au/dbs/7016/...7a.htm#2067717
The previous one required you to be signed with technet - the one above
should be viewable by all.
John
John Sidney-Woollett said: I agree with most of this sentiment. Even knowing SQL and RDBMs reasonably
well, there is still a significant effort involved in moving from another
RDBMS (in my case Oracle) to postgres.
The postgres docs provide much all the detail (in a very concise form).
The hard part is putting all the different pieces together to solve some
problem. In fact, this is where the postgres users list is so good,
because the support and feedback from it is excellent.
Contrast this page from the docs (for the update statement),
http://www.postgres.org/docs/current...ql-update.html with
Oracle's (for 8.1.7)
http://download-west.oracle.com/docs...7a.htm#2067717
Some might feel that much of the information is redundant or bloat. I
disagree - you get a feel for what is possible as well as links to other
commands, subtopics, and concept explanations.
Someone commented that maintaining docs (of this sort) would be too hard -
I disagree. Many of the commands are *mostly* implementation agnostic, and
the initial docs would require siginificant effort to build, but should
only require moderate maintenance as features are added or modified.
Just my two cents (again).
John Sidney-Woollett
ps And yes, I would be willing to help once my current project is
complete...
Tony said: By that logic then, we can probably ditch the PG Tutorial altogether and
provide a quick ref card of PG commands and keywords, with a few pages
on how PG is different should be plenty.
The bisggest problem that I faced when moving to PG was the complete
lack of any cetralised information source for this information. Sure
there are tutorials on the web, first track them down, then convert
their use to PG then collate them, then make some sense of it all.
This is the kind of aloofness that I have mentioned previously, just
because it doesn't belong, doesn't mean it's not needed, and it only
needs to be written once. Although I know some of the concepts and I'm
beginning to grock them, I'm still trying to collate enough to satisfy
my needs.
Assuming yo *do* want to grow the PG community and attract people from
other systems, the easier the transition for them, the less likely they
are to look elsewhere for something that appears easier. Easier
doesn't always mean easier to use, sometimes it can mean easier to get
to grips with.
T.
Shridhar Daithankar wrote:
For one thing, these thing do not belong to postgresql documentation.
But I don't believe there is shortage of material on these topics on web
and
in print.
However if you are refering to explaining these things, w.r.t.
postgresql, I
would be more than happy to churn out some extremely basic tutorials.
Can you tell us what all you need? Rephrasing, if you know these(and
some
other) concpets by now, what all you missed while learning postgresql?
It may sound like stupid question but unlearning things out of
imagination is
not easy...:-)
Shridhar
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 7: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate
subscribe-nomail command to ma*******@postgresql.org so that your
message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 8: explain analyze is your friend
Alex Satrapa (Sunday 28 December 2003 22:16) Just convince your distribution's
My what? I don't use no stinkin' distribution :).
postgresql package maintainer
That would be postgresql.org, I know not of binary packages.
"suggests/recommends" portion of the package management metadata.
Tar does not provide such metadata, and a suggestion is hardly the same as an
inclusion.
I'm just saying that it would be nice to include both CLI and GUI interfaces,
not to mention things like ODBC, as an alternative to the "minimalist"
download.
I got a private reply suggesting putting together a "distribution" of
PostgreSQL including extras, so that may be a possible route as well.
Vertu sæll,
--
Sigþór Björn Jarðarson (Casey Allen Shobe) http://rivyn.livejournal.com
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
> I'm in a similar situation. My app is currently PG-only (although I _might_ be able to get it work with Firebird eventually). Currently I have
to sell Linux to prospective clients in addition to my app. A native
Windows version would make my life a bit easier.
Same here.
Our "clients" use legacy medical office software that 99% runs
on Windows. We offer add-ons (tailored mini-versions of our
main application :-) and thus get OSS (Python, PostgreSQL,
wxWindows, sometimes Linux itself) into their offices and onto
their networks. Most of the time the main difficulty is to figure
out how to offer PostgreSQL in their environment (yes, we know
about CygWin).
("clients" because we don't do business as in selling stuff)
Karsten Hilbert, MD www.gnumed.org
--
GPG key ID E4071346 @ wwwkeys.pgp.net
E167 67FD A291 2BEA 73BD 4537 78B9 A9F9 E407 1346
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command
(send "unregister YourEmailAddressHere" to ma*******@postgresql.org)
A documentation system like the one over at http://php.net, would be
fantastic for Postgresql. There could be lookups based on SQL commands,
Functions, and Sitewide Searches. This alone would go a long way to
expose PHP to "the masses".
In terms of using MySQL or Postgresql, lets all face it, most data
storage work could be easily and efficiently handled by text files,
since there needs to be just infrequent inserts and updates, and mostly
reads. The majority of interfaces exposed on the web follow this
paradigm, and include:
* Content management
* Catalogs
* Shopping cart stuff
* User management
Yes, our powerful and easy to use PG can do all of that too, but SQLite,
Sleepycat DBM files and MySQL can do it as well. There are going to be
even more migrations for Oracle to MySQL than from Oracle to PG, because
so many of those Oracle installations were overkill in the first place.
Our place is in that hoary back end that runs the world, the un-sexy
part of any organization that no one outside of the Development team, or
System Administrators know about.
Getting mindshare is a different problem. That requires PG to have a
full time effective press person. This press person would need to be in
touch with the press constantly to tell them things like:
* PG is a great back for windows clients using ODBC/MS Access/Excel
* PG is a "real" database comparable to Oracle
* PG costs nothing
* Free support is fabulous, and paid support is available
* Development is constant
In the end, I believe that PG needs to move into an organizational
structure so that its considerable assets can be fully realized, its
wonderful developers may be fully compensated, and commercial users (our
bread and butter), can have an official place to help sponsor features
of the system and so on. All this is more than a website. Someone posted
pictures of the PG booth at a show recently. It was nice, but there was
this one sad guy shrouded in darkness -- I felt depressed, because
that's how PG advocacy felt.
Warm regards,
Ericson Smith
DBA/Developer
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
| http://www.did-it.com | "When I'm paid, I always |
| er**@did-it.com | follow the job through. |
| 516-255-0500 | You know that." -Angel Eyes|
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
Karsten Hilbert wrote: I'm in a similar situation. My app is currently PG-only (although I
_might_ be able to get it work with Firebird eventually). Currently I have
to sell Linux to prospective clients in addition to my app. A native
Windows version would make my life a bit easier.
Same here.
Our "clients" use legacy medical office software that 99% runs
on Windows. We offer add-ons (tailored mini-versions of our
main application :-) and thus get OSS (Python, PostgreSQL,
wxWindows, sometimes Linux itself) into their offices and onto
their networks. Most of the time the main difficulty is to figure
out how to offer PostgreSQL in their environment (yes, we know
about CygWin).
("clients" because we don't do business as in selling stuff)
Karsten Hilbert, MD
www.gnumed.org
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 8: explain analyze is your friend
This has been an interesting thread, with lots of well
considered contributions. The consensus seems to be
"PostgreSQL is plenty good enough and more, we just
need more people to know it, and an easier learning
path".
What bothers me a little here is an apparent lack of
awareness of the work of the Advocacy Group. They
have been organized for a little over one full release
cycle, but have already begun to achieve some
impressive things. The release of version 7.4 saw a
well prepared press release, which was subsequently
picked up by journalists and featured (often lifted
word for word) in articles in a variety of IT industry
publications around the world. The effect was to get
our marketing material in front of the eyes of many
readers, without them having to go looking for it at
all. When did that happen before?
I cite that as just one example of what can be
achieved by an organized and co-ordinated approach,
which is just what the Advocacy Group is working on.
The scope for more development along these lines is
huge, all that is needed is the passage of time, and
hopefully more contributions from more people. I
recommend to all those whose interest was caught by
this thread to check out the pgsql-advocacy list, if
you have not already done so, and think about what you
might be able to add. In answer to the obvious
question, I have been lurking on that list for a
while, and intend to make a contribution where I feel
fitted to do so.
Maybe we need to invent some new solutions, but for
advocacy at least, we already have one.
--- Ericson Smith <er**@did-it.com> wrote: A documentation system like the one over at
http://php.net, would be
fantastic for Postgresql. There could be lookups
based on SQL commands,
Functions, and Sitewide Searches. This alone would
go a long way to
expose PHP to "the masses".
In terms of using MySQL or Postgresql, lets all face
it, most data
storage work could be easily and efficiently handled
by text files,
since there needs to be just infrequent inserts and
updates, and mostly
reads. The majority of interfaces exposed on the web
follow this
paradigm, and include:
* Content management
* Catalogs
* Shopping cart stuff
* User management
Yes, our powerful and easy to use PG can do all of
that too, but SQLite,
Sleepycat DBM files and MySQL can do it as well.
There are going to be
even more migrations for Oracle to MySQL than from
Oracle to PG, because
so many of those Oracle installations were overkill
in the first place.
Our place is in that hoary back end that runs the
world, the un-sexy
part of any organization that no one outside of the
Development team, or
System Administrators know about.
Getting mindshare is a different problem. That
requires PG to have a
full time effective press person. This press person
would need to be in
touch with the press constantly to tell them things
like:
* PG is a great back for windows clients using
ODBC/MS Access/Excel
* PG is a "real" database comparable to Oracle
* PG costs nothing
* Free support is fabulous, and paid support is
available
* Development is constant
In the end, I believe that PG needs to move into an
organizational
structure so that its considerable assets can be
fully realized, its
wonderful developers may be fully compensated, and
commercial users (our
bread and butter), can have an official place to
help sponsor features
of the system and so on. All this is more than a
website. Someone posted
pictures of the PG booth at a show recently. It was
nice, but there was
this one sad guy shrouded in darkness -- I felt
depressed, because
that's how PG advocacy felt.
Warm regards,
Ericson Smith
DBA/Developer
+-----------------------+----------------------------+ | http://www.did-it.com | "When I'm paid, I always
|
| er**@did-it.com | follow the job through.
|
| 516-255-0500 | You know that." -Angel
Eyes|
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
Karsten Hilbert wrote:
I'm in a similar situation. My app is currently PG-only (although I_might_ be able to get it work with Firebird eventually). Currently I haveto sell Linux to prospective clients in addition to my app. A nativeWindows version would make my life a bit easier.
Same here.
Our "clients" use legacy medical office software
that 99% runson Windows. We offer add-ons (tailored
mini-versions of ourmain application :-) and thus get OSS (Python,
PostgreSQL,wxWindows, sometimes Linux itself) into their
offices and ontotheir networks. Most of the time the main
difficulty is to figureout how to offer PostgreSQL in their environment
(yes, we knowabout CygWin).
("clients" because we don't do business as in
selling stuff)
Karsten Hilbert, MD
www.gnumed.org
begin:vcard
fn:Ericson Smith
n:Smith;Ericson
org:Did-it.com;Programming
adr:#304;;55 Maple Avenue;Rockville
Center;NY;11570;USA
email;internet:er**@did-it.com
title:Web Developer
tel;work:516-255-0500
tel;cell:646-483-3420
note:Nothing special!
x-mozilla-html:FALSE
url:http://www.did-it.com
version:2.1
end:vcard
---------------------------(end of
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TIP 8: explain analyze is your friend
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing. http://photos.yahoo.com/
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Chris Travers (Sunday 28 December 2003 20:56) Also, here in Indonesia, most of these B&B's charge less than $30/night.
Purchasing a new system (often $700 or more) is the equivalent of 23
room-nights (for a place which typically has fewer than 10 rooms). Used
PC's are out of the question because usually they have hardware issues, and
so the cost savings would be marginal.
Hmm...good points that I had not considered...I'm used to being here in the
US, where I can go buy a brand new low-end Celeron server for under $200.
Not the greatest piece of hardware, but cheap :).
Vertu sæll,
--
Sigþór Björn Jarðarson (Casey Allen Shobe) http://rivyn.livejournal.com
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TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faqs/FAQ.html
Tony <to**@unihost.net> writes: ... I DO believe however that a decent introduction to
the more important concepts (Triggers, Fkeys, Stored Proc, Views) that
people from lesser systems (MySQL, Access) may not be familiar with.
What they do, how they help, and why they are generally a good thing.
This intro would probably fit either in the tutorial or in the User Guide.
Many of these subjects already *are* covered in the Tutorial. Just
looking in the 7.4 table of contents, I see
3. Advanced Features
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Views
3.3. Foreign Keys
3.4. Transactions
3.5. Inheritance
3.6. Conclusion
The discussions are skimpy and could use fleshed out a little, no doubt.
(Anyone who wants to contribute material is surely welcome to.)
BTW, there is a separate mailing list pgsql-docs for those who want to
work on documentation.
regards, tom lane
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TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Jeff,
I agree; we have an apparent lack of awareness of many things. IMO this
is more indicative of a lack of a unified presence than anything else.
part of the project is on gborg, part of the project is on advocacy,
..... etc.
How would a newbie know to go look for advocacy.postgresql.org ?.
Dave
On Mon, 2003-12-29 at 10:18, Jeff Eckermann wrote: This has been an interesting thread, with lots of well
considered contributions. The consensus seems to be
"PostgreSQL is plenty good enough and more, we just
need more people to know it, and an easier learning
path".
What bothers me a little here is an apparent lack of
awareness of the work of the Advocacy Group. They
have been organized for a little over one full release
cycle, but have already begun to achieve some
impressive things. The release of version 7.4 saw a
well prepared press release, which was subsequently
picked up by journalists and featured (often lifted
word for word) in articles in a variety of IT industry
publications around the world. The effect was to get
our marketing material in front of the eyes of many
readers, without them having to go looking for it at
all. When did that happen before?
I cite that as just one example of what can be
achieved by an organized and co-ordinated approach,
which is just what the Advocacy Group is working on.
The scope for more development along these lines is
huge, all that is needed is the passage of time, and
hopefully more contributions from more people. I
recommend to all those whose interest was caught by
this thread to check out the pgsql-advocacy list, if
you have not already done so, and think about what you
might be able to add. In answer to the obvious
question, I have been lurking on that list for a
while, and intend to make a contribution where I feel
fitted to do so.
Maybe we need to invent some new solutions, but for
advocacy at least, we already have one.
--- Ericson Smith <er**@did-it.com> wrote: A documentation system like the one over at
http://php.net, would be
fantastic for Postgresql. There could be lookups
based on SQL commands,
Functions, and Sitewide Searches. This alone would
go a long way to
expose PHP to "the masses".
In terms of using MySQL or Postgresql, lets all face
it, most data
storage work could be easily and efficiently handled
by text files,
since there needs to be just infrequent inserts and
updates, and mostly
reads. The majority of interfaces exposed on the web
follow this
paradigm, and include:
* Content management
* Catalogs
* Shopping cart stuff
* User management
Yes, our powerful and easy to use PG can do all of
that too, but SQLite,
Sleepycat DBM files and MySQL can do it as well.
There are going to be
even more migrations for Oracle to MySQL than from
Oracle to PG, because
so many of those Oracle installations were overkill
in the first place.
Our place is in that hoary back end that runs the
world, the un-sexy
part of any organization that no one outside of the
Development team, or
System Administrators know about.
Getting mindshare is a different problem. That
requires PG to have a
full time effective press person. This press person
would need to be in
touch with the press constantly to tell them things
like:
* PG is a great back for windows clients using
ODBC/MS Access/Excel
* PG is a "real" database comparable to Oracle
* PG costs nothing
* Free support is fabulous, and paid support is
available
* Development is constant
In the end, I believe that PG needs to move into an
organizational
structure so that its considerable assets can be
fully realized, its
wonderful developers may be fully compensated, and
commercial users (our
bread and butter), can have an official place to
help sponsor features
of the system and so on. All this is more than a
website. Someone posted
pictures of the PG booth at a show recently. It was
nice, but there was
this one sad guy shrouded in darkness -- I felt
depressed, because
that's how PG advocacy felt.
Warm regards,
Ericson Smith
DBA/Developer
+-----------------------+----------------------------+ | http://www.did-it.com | "When I'm paid, I always
|
| er**@did-it.com | follow the job through.
|
| 516-255-0500 | You know that." -Angel
Eyes|
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
Karsten Hilbert wrote:
>I'm in a similar situation. My app is currently
PG-only (although I>_might_ be able to get it work with Firebird
eventually). Currently I have>to sell Linux to prospective clients in addition
to my app. A native>Windows version would make my life a bit easier.
>
>
Same here.
Our "clients" use legacy medical office software
that 99% runson Windows. We offer add-ons (tailored
mini-versions of ourmain application :-) and thus get OSS (Python,
PostgreSQL,wxWindows, sometimes Linux itself) into their
offices and ontotheir networks. Most of the time the main
difficulty is to figureout how to offer PostgreSQL in their environment
(yes, we knowabout CygWin).
("clients" because we don't do business as in
selling stuff)
Karsten Hilbert, MD
www.gnumed.org
begin:vcard
fn:Ericson Smith
n:Smith;Ericson
org:Did-it.com;Programming
adr:#304;;55 Maple Avenue;Rockville
Center;NY;11570;USA
email;internet:er**@did-it.com
title:Web Developer
tel;work:516-255-0500
tel;cell:646-483-3420
note:Nothing special!
x-mozilla-html:FALSE
url:http://www.did-it.com
version:2.1
end:vcard
---------------------------(end of
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TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Quoting Shridhar Daithankar <sh*****************@myrealbox.com>: On Monday 29 December 2003 12:47, Tom Lane wrote: Shridhar Daithankar <sh*****************@myrealbox.com> writes: That is right. but that fact remains that postgresql documentation is
just sufficient. If you read the manual and follow it religously to comma and fullstop, it tells you everythings. But it certainly isn't a place
where you can glance over it and get hang of it.
This is surely true, and I've not seen anyone denying it. The people
Well, for newbies to postgresql, let's state this fact upfront and not make
them discover it..:-)
who are doing development are, um, not strong at documentation (I
include myself here). What we need are some folks to step up and
improve the documentation --- and then maintain it in the face of future
changes. Any volunteers out there? This is an open-source project
after all, and that means "scratch your own itch" among other things...
If you ask me, let's not do that. Not at least on a grand scale. Isolated
areas are OK on case by case basis..
I regualrly use development build documentation from
developers.postgresql.org
and I have seen the documentation in source code. In my view, postgresql
developers do document it very clearly whenever required.
If we dilute the documentation too much, that will make things simpler
initially but that will simply create a maintainance nightmare as one has to
maintain much larger amount of documentation.
And once you get used to precise style of postgresql documentation, going
back
to anything else is a pain. ( MSDN.. I scream at nights.... but I digress).
IMO documentation of postgresql is fine overall. What we need to do is.
1. State upfront that this is not handholding.
It will make lots of things easier and offload work of expanding documents
given limited human resources working on the project. A disclaimer is far
easier to maintain than a manual..:-)
And it will prepare anybody for upcoming hardships..:-)
2. Document and reuse it.
Personally I would like to see responses on general and oter such list as
URLs. If we answer it repeatedly, let's document it and point the people to
them. Let them dig around 3-4 URLs around it and they will have islands of
enlightenments. Over the period, these island will merge in a great
landscape..:-)
Just a thought..
Shridhar
P.S. If somebody thinks I can not imagine how a newbie feels, I will agree.
But looking back, dumbing down anything is not good in long term..an
experience that is
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
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Shridhar,
I tend to agree with you. I personally think the docs are very good and have
the techical depth warranted for a product like PostgreSQL. On the other hand
for the ad & m (advocacy and marketing) side of things. I'm betting some
clearly labelled tutorials/guide next to the disclaimer about the the main docs
be more of a reference would appease those who might be a bit green to a product
of PG breadth and depth (heck I still think I'm in the category sometimes).
'bout two weeks ago there was another thread where certificating/training et al
were discussed and one of the things that I had mentioned was that in that
regard, we should probably have more tutorial/guide based on real world
scenarios available on techdocs. Although I don't think I qualified to write
for the main docs, I definitely can contribute to the techdocs in the manner I
just mentioned.
Matter a fact, I finally finish my first one "Using PostgreSQL for Domino 6
RDBMS Backends". I'm doing the final read now so hopefully I can get it over to
Robert for posting.
Perhaps the "newer" folks on the list could tell us what type of guides they
want to see. I'm sure someone has a wish list somewhere.
--
Keith C. Perry, MS E.E.
Director of Networks & Applications
VCSN, Inc. http://vcsn.com
____________________________________
This email account is being host by:
VCSN, Inc : http://vcsn.com
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Quoting Tom Lane <tg*@sss.pgh.pa.us>: Tony <to**@unihost.net> writes: ... I DO believe however that a decent introduction to
the more important concepts (Triggers, Fkeys, Stored Proc, Views) that
people from lesser systems (MySQL, Access) may not be familiar with.
What they do, how they help, and why they are generally a good thing.
This intro would probably fit either in the tutorial or in the User Guide.
Many of these subjects already *are* covered in the Tutorial. Just
looking in the 7.4 table of contents, I see
3. Advanced Features
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Views
3.3. Foreign Keys
3.4. Transactions
3.5. Inheritance
3.6. Conclusion
The discussions are skimpy and could use fleshed out a little, no doubt.
(Anyone who wants to contribute material is surely welcome to.)
BTW, there is a separate mailing list pgsql-docs for those who want to
work on documentation.
regards, tom lane
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
This concerns me. This is the second time recently someone has said something
is NOT documented and it it turn out it is.
So my question is (no offense to anyone) are the web sites not "clear" enough to
find information quickly or are people just being lax/lazy when they are searching.
--
Keith C. Perry, MS E.E.
Director of Networks & Applications
VCSN, Inc. http://vcsn.com
____________________________________
This email account is being host by:
VCSN, Inc : http://vcsn.com
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Quoting Karsten Hilbert <Ka*************@gmx.net>: I'm in a similar situation. My app is currently PG-only (although I
_might_ be able to get it work with Firebird eventually). Currently I have
to sell Linux to prospective clients in addition to my app. A native
Windows version would make my life a bit easier.
Same here.
Our "clients" use legacy medical office software that 99% runs
on Windows. We offer add-ons (tailored mini-versions of our
main application :-) and thus get OSS (Python, PostgreSQL,
wxWindows, sometimes Linux itself) into their offices and onto
their networks. Most of the time the main difficulty is to figure
out how to offer PostgreSQL in their environment (yes, we know
about CygWin).
("clients" because we don't do business as in selling stuff)
Karsten Hilbert, MD
www.gnumed.org
--
GPG key ID E4071346 @ wwwkeys.pgp.net
E167 67FD A291 2BEA 73BD 4537 78B9 A9F9 E407 1346
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command
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I know in a lot of environments this would not be via, especially a medical one
where information is sensitive but have you considered using a hoster to house
your app/database and then writing (windows) clients (with secure backends)?
There are a number of hosters including myself that would probably be more that
willing to partner with you see how with can be does so that it an acceptable
scenario all the way around.
-$0.02
--
Keith C. Perry, MS E.E.
Director of Networks & Applications
VCSN, Inc. http://vcsn.com
____________________________________
This email account is being host by:
VCSN, Inc : http://vcsn.com
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 8: explain analyze is your friend
Quoting Jeff Eckermann <je************@yahoo.com>: This has been an interesting thread, with lots of well
considered contributions. The consensus seems to be
"PostgreSQL is plenty good enough and more, we just
need more people to know it, and an easier learning
path".
What bothers me a little here is an apparent lack of
awareness of the work of the Advocacy Group. They
have been organized for a little over one full release
cycle, but have already begun to achieve some
impressive things. The release of version 7.4 saw a
well prepared press release, which was subsequently
picked up by journalists and featured (often lifted
word for word) in articles in a variety of IT industry
publications around the world. The effect was to get
our marketing material in front of the eyes of many
readers, without them having to go looking for it at
all. When did that happen before?
I cite that as just one example of what can be
achieved by an organized and co-ordinated approach,
which is just what the Advocacy Group is working on.
The scope for more development along these lines is
huge, all that is needed is the passage of time, and
hopefully more contributions from more people. I
recommend to all those whose interest was caught by
this thread to check out the pgsql-advocacy list, if
you have not already done so, and think about what you
might be able to add. In answer to the obvious
question, I have been lurking on that list for a
while, and intend to make a contribution where I feel
fitted to do so.
Maybe we need to invent some new solutions, but for
advocacy at least, we already have one.
--- Ericson Smith <er**@did-it.com> wrote: A documentation system like the one over at
http://php.net, would be
fantastic for Postgresql. There could be lookups
based on SQL commands,
Functions, and Sitewide Searches. This alone would
go a long way to
expose PHP to "the masses".
In terms of using MySQL or Postgresql, lets all face
it, most data
storage work could be easily and efficiently handled
by text files,
since there needs to be just infrequent inserts and
updates, and mostly
reads. The majority of interfaces exposed on the web
follow this
paradigm, and include:
* Content management
* Catalogs
* Shopping cart stuff
* User management
Yes, our powerful and easy to use PG can do all of
that too, but SQLite,
Sleepycat DBM files and MySQL can do it as well.
There are going to be
even more migrations for Oracle to MySQL than from
Oracle to PG, because
so many of those Oracle installations were overkill
in the first place.
Our place is in that hoary back end that runs the
world, the un-sexy
part of any organization that no one outside of the
Development team, or
System Administrators know about.
Getting mindshare is a different problem. That
requires PG to have a
full time effective press person. This press person
would need to be in
touch with the press constantly to tell them things
like:
* PG is a great back for windows clients using
ODBC/MS Access/Excel
* PG is a "real" database comparable to Oracle
* PG costs nothing
* Free support is fabulous, and paid support is
available
* Development is constant
In the end, I believe that PG needs to move into an
organizational
structure so that its considerable assets can be
fully realized, its
wonderful developers may be fully compensated, and
commercial users (our
bread and butter), can have an official place to
help sponsor features
of the system and so on. All this is more than a
website. Someone posted
pictures of the PG booth at a show recently. It was
nice, but there was
this one sad guy shrouded in darkness -- I felt
depressed, because
that's how PG advocacy felt.
Warm regards,
Ericson Smith
DBA/Developer
+-----------------------+----------------------------+ | http://www.did-it.com | "When I'm paid, I always
|
| er**@did-it.com | follow the job through.
|
| 516-255-0500 | You know that." -Angel
Eyes|
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
Karsten Hilbert wrote:
>I'm in a similar situation. My app is currently
PG-only (although I>_might_ be able to get it work with Firebird
eventually). Currently I have>to sell Linux to prospective clients in addition
to my app. A native>Windows version would make my life a bit easier.
>
>
Same here.
Our "clients" use legacy medical office software
that 99% runson Windows. We offer add-ons (tailored
mini-versions of ourmain application :-) and thus get OSS (Python,
PostgreSQL,wxWindows, sometimes Linux itself) into their
offices and ontotheir networks. Most of the time the main
difficulty is to figureout how to offer PostgreSQL in their environment
(yes, we knowabout CygWin).
("clients" because we don't do business as in
selling stuff)
Karsten Hilbert, MD
www.gnumed.org
begin:vcard
fn:Ericson Smith
n:Smith;Ericson
org:Did-it.com;Programming
adr:#304;;55 Maple Avenue;Rockville
Center;NY;11570;USA
email;internet:er**@did-it.com
title:Web Developer
tel;work:516-255-0500
tel;cell:646-483-3420
note:Nothing special!
x-mozilla-html:FALSE
url:http://www.did-it.com
version:2.1
end:vcard
---------------------------(end of
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TIP 8: explain analyze is your friend
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I've been meaning to join Jeff 'cause I'm tired of seeing my cross-posted
replies rejected but see, "what had happened was..." *laff*
Seriously though, you guys are doing a hard job in a hard arena. The 7.4 press
release got forwarded alot!
--
Keith C. Perry, MS E.E.
Director of Networks & Applications
VCSN, Inc. http://vcsn.com
____________________________________
This email account is being host by:
VCSN, Inc : http://vcsn.com
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
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Quoting Dave Cramer <pg@fastcrypt.com>: Jeff,
I agree; we have an apparent lack of awareness of many things. IMO this
is more indicative of a lack of a unified presence than anything else.
part of the project is on gborg, part of the project is on advocacy,
.... etc.
How would a newbie know to go look for advocacy.postgresql.org ?.
Dave
On Mon, 2003-12-29 at 10:18, Jeff Eckermann wrote: This has been an interesting thread, with lots of well
considered contributions. The consensus seems to be
"PostgreSQL is plenty good enough and more, we just
need more people to know it, and an easier learning
path".
What bothers me a little here is an apparent lack of
awareness of the work of the Advocacy Group. They
have been organized for a little over one full release
cycle, but have already begun to achieve some
impressive things. The release of version 7.4 saw a
well prepared press release, which was subsequently
picked up by journalists and featured (often lifted
word for word) in articles in a variety of IT industry
publications around the world. The effect was to get
our marketing material in front of the eyes of many
readers, without them having to go looking for it at
all. When did that happen before?
I cite that as just one example of what can be
achieved by an organized and co-ordinated approach,
which is just what the Advocacy Group is working on.
The scope for more development along these lines is
huge, all that is needed is the passage of time, and
hopefully more contributions from more people. I
recommend to all those whose interest was caught by
this thread to check out the pgsql-advocacy list, if
you have not already done so, and think about what you
might be able to add. In answer to the obvious
question, I have been lurking on that list for a
while, and intend to make a contribution where I feel
fitted to do so.
Maybe we need to invent some new solutions, but for
advocacy at least, we already have one.
--- Ericson Smith <er**@did-it.com> wrote: A documentation system like the one over at
http://php.net, would be
fantastic for Postgresql. There could be lookups
based on SQL commands,
Functions, and Sitewide Searches. This alone would
go a long way to
expose PHP to "the masses".
In terms of using MySQL or Postgresql, lets all face
it, most data
storage work could be easily and efficiently handled
by text files,
since there needs to be just infrequent inserts and
updates, and mostly
reads. The majority of interfaces exposed on the web
follow this
paradigm, and include:
* Content management
* Catalogs
* Shopping cart stuff
* User management
Yes, our powerful and easy to use PG can do all of
that too, but SQLite,
Sleepycat DBM files and MySQL can do it as well.
There are going to be
even more migrations for Oracle to MySQL than from
Oracle to PG, because
so many of those Oracle installations were overkill
in the first place.
Our place is in that hoary back end that runs the
world, the un-sexy
part of any organization that no one outside of the
Development team, or
System Administrators know about.
Getting mindshare is a different problem. That
requires PG to have a
full time effective press person. This press person
would need to be in
touch with the press constantly to tell them things
like:
* PG is a great back for windows clients using
ODBC/MS Access/Excel
* PG is a "real" database comparable to Oracle
* PG costs nothing
* Free support is fabulous, and paid support is
available
* Development is constant
In the end, I believe that PG needs to move into an
organizational
structure so that its considerable assets can be
fully realized, its
wonderful developers may be fully compensated, and
commercial users (our
bread and butter), can have an official place to
help sponsor features
of the system and so on. All this is more than a
website. Someone posted
pictures of the PG booth at a show recently. It was
nice, but there was
this one sad guy shrouded in darkness -- I felt
depressed, because
that's how PG advocacy felt.
Warm regards,
Ericson Smith
DBA/Developer
+-----------------------+----------------------------+ | http://www.did-it.com | "When I'm paid, I always
|
| er**@did-it.com | follow the job through.
|
| 516-255-0500 | You know that." -Angel
Eyes|
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
Karsten Hilbert wrote:
>>I'm in a similar situation. My app is currently
PG-only (although I
>>_might_ be able to get it work with Firebird
eventually). Currently I have
>>to sell Linux to prospective clients in addition
to my app. A native
>>Windows version would make my life a bit easier.
>>
>>
>Same here.
>
>Our "clients" use legacy medical office software
that 99% runs
>on Windows. We offer add-ons (tailored
mini-versions of our
>main application :-) and thus get OSS (Python,
PostgreSQL,
>wxWindows, sometimes Linux itself) into their
offices and onto
>their networks. Most of the time the main
difficulty is to figure
>out how to offer PostgreSQL in their environment
(yes, we know
>about CygWin).
>
>("clients" because we don't do business as in
selling stuff)
>
>Karsten Hilbert, MD
>
>www.gnumed.org
>
>
> begin:vcard
fn:Ericson Smith
n:Smith;Ericson
org:Did-it.com;Programming
adr:#304;;55 Maple Avenue;Rockville
Center;NY;11570;USA
email;internet:er**@did-it.com
title:Web Developer
tel;work:516-255-0500
tel;cell:646-483-3420
note:Nothing special!
x-mozilla-html:FALSE
url:http://www.did-it.com
version:2.1
end:vcard
>
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TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives?
http://archives.postgresql.org
Dave,
I'm not trying to be curt with you or anything but a serious questions, did you
not see the links on the right side of http://www.postgresql.org under where it
says websites?
--
Keith C. Perry, MS E.E.
Director of Networks & Applications
VCSN, Inc. http://vcsn.com
____________________________________
This email account is being host by:
VCSN, Inc : http://vcsn.com
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 7: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes: How about just a "Getting Started with PostgreSQL" guide... Python
is like this. They have the "real" documentation but they also have a
introductory tutorial. We could have a brief document (100 pages or
less) that talks about the basic concepts of PostgreSQL...
How would this differ from the existing Tutorial?
regards, tom lane
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
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> > Our "clients" use legacy medical office software that 99% runs on Windows. We offer add-ons (tailored mini-versions of our
main application :-) and thus get OSS (Python, PostgreSQL,
wxWindows, sometimes Linux itself) into their offices and onto
their networks. Most of the time the main difficulty is to figure
out how to offer PostgreSQL in their environment (yes, we know
about CygWin).
("clients" because we don't do business as in selling stuff)
I know in a lot of environments this would not be via, especially a medical one
where information is sensitive but have you considered using a hoster to house
your app/database and then writing (windows) clients (with secure backends)?
Well, this is just for test driving so no sensitive data is of
any concern.
There are a number of hosters including myself that would probably be more that
willing to partner with you see how with can be does so that it an acceptable
scenario all the way around.
I am talking about potential users looking at GnuMed. I am
just a developer, I am not interested in selling anything to
anyone. I am, however, interested in making it easier for them
to have a look at that piece of code. Which involves
connecting to a PostgreSQL instance somewhere some way or other.
Karsten
--
GPG key ID E4071346 @ wwwkeys.pgp.net
E167 67FD A291 2BEA 73BD 4537 78B9 A9F9 E407 1346
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I already had in the first post I replied to, but at the risk of
sounding redundant, I'll say it again.
Views: When I came to PG I didn't know what they were, saw no point to
them (still don't) why do you need a function to provide details of a
query when a more complicated query gives the same data? Are they
designed for people who don't like to type long queries?
Stored Procedures: Sounds good in principle, but in what ways can I
benefit most (I understand this now) at the time of moving to PG, I
couldn't see the difference between writing my code in an a Stored Proc
or an API.
Triggers: make perfect sense now, but didn't used to when I didn't know
what they were.
This isn't definitive list but more of a flavour of the obstacles I hit
when I first met PG. If I hadn't persevered (and many may not) I'd have
ended up with a PG server full of DBs designed and built as if they were
on a MySQL server.
Yes, the topics are covered fleetingly in the tutorial, but do such
important topics only warrant 3 pages of text between the lot of them?
It's great that the subjects are present, but it seems to be in more of
a kind of "Whilst We're on the Subject of Databases" kind of passing
comment.
Maybe I'm asking for the Moon on a Stick, but it didn't feel like I was :)
T.
Shridhar Daithankar wrote: On Monday 29 December 2003 15:25, Tony wrote:
By that logic then, we can probably ditch the PG Tutorial altogether and
provide a quick ref card of PG commands and keywords, with a few pages
on how PG is different should be plenty.
The bisggest problem that I faced when moving to PG was the complete
lack of any cetralised information source for this information. Sure
there are tutorials on the web, first track them down, then convert
their use to PG then collate them, then make some sense of it all.
This is the kind of aloofness that I have mentioned previously, just
because it doesn't belong, doesn't mean it's not needed, and it only
needs to be written once. Although I know some of the concepts and I'm
beginning to grock them, I'm still trying to collate enough to satisfy
my needs.
Assuming yo *do* want to grow the PG community and attract people from
other systems, the easier the transition for them, the less likely they
are to look elsewhere for something that appears easier. Easier
doesn't always mean easier to use, sometimes it can mean easier to get
to grips with.
*Sigh*.. You just read my first remark which you could have bypassed but
anyways..
What do you think of offer I made? I was slightly disappointed to see that you
missed it..
I am not removing my original message. Please read and let me know what do you
think..
Shridhar Daithankar wrote:
For one thing, these thing do not belong to postgresql documentation.
But I don't believe there is shortage of material on these topics on web
and in print.
However if you are refering to explaining these things, w.r.t. postgresql,
I would be more than happy to churn out some extremely basic tutorials.
Can you tell us what all you need? Rephrasing, if you know these(and some
other) concpets by now, what all you missed while learning postgresql?
It may sound like stupid question but unlearning things out of imagination
is not easy...:-)
Shridhar
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Keith,
Oh, there it is, in tiny print.
Dave
On Mon, 2003-12-29 at 15:03, Keith C. Perry wrote: Quoting Dave Cramer <pg@fastcrypt.com>:
Jeff,
I agree; we have an apparent lack of awareness of many things. IMO this
is more indicative of a lack of a unified presence than anything else.
part of the project is on gborg, part of the project is on advocacy,
.... etc.
How would a newbie know to go look for advocacy.postgresql.org ?.
Dave
On Mon, 2003-12-29 at 10:18, Jeff Eckermann wrote: This has been an interesting thread, with lots of well
considered contributions. The consensus seems to be
"PostgreSQL is plenty good enough and more, we just
need more people to know it, and an easier learning
path".
What bothers me a little here is an apparent lack of
awareness of the work of the Advocacy Group. They
have been organized for a little over one full release
cycle, but have already begun to achieve some
impressive things. The release of version 7.4 saw a
well prepared press release, which was subsequently
picked up by journalists and featured (often lifted
word for word) in articles in a variety of IT industry
publications around the world. The effect was to get
our marketing material in front of the eyes of many
readers, without them having to go looking for it at
all. When did that happen before?
I cite that as just one example of what can be
achieved by an organized and co-ordinated approach,
which is just what the Advocacy Group is working on.
The scope for more development along these lines is
huge, all that is needed is the passage of time, and
hopefully more contributions from more people. I
recommend to all those whose interest was caught by
this thread to check out the pgsql-advocacy list, if
you have not already done so, and think about what you
might be able to add. In answer to the obvious
question, I have been lurking on that list for a
while, and intend to make a contribution where I feel
fitted to do so.
Maybe we need to invent some new solutions, but for
advocacy at least, we already have one.
--- Ericson Smith <er**@did-it.com> wrote:
> A documentation system like the one over at
> http://php.net, would be
> fantastic for Postgresql. There could be lookups
> based on SQL commands,
> Functions, and Sitewide Searches. This alone would
> go a long way to
> expose PHP to "the masses".
>
> In terms of using MySQL or Postgresql, lets all face
> it, most data
> storage work could be easily and efficiently handled
> by text files,
> since there needs to be just infrequent inserts and
> updates, and mostly
> reads. The majority of interfaces exposed on the web
> follow this
> paradigm, and include:
> * Content management
> * Catalogs
> * Shopping cart stuff
> * User management
>
> Yes, our powerful and easy to use PG can do all of
> that too, but SQLite,
> Sleepycat DBM files and MySQL can do it as well.
> There are going to be
> even more migrations for Oracle to MySQL than from
> Oracle to PG, because
> so many of those Oracle installations were overkill
> in the first place.
> Our place is in that hoary back end that runs the
> world, the un-sexy
> part of any organization that no one outside of the
> Development team, or
> System Administrators know about.
>
> Getting mindshare is a different problem. That
> requires PG to have a
> full time effective press person. This press person
> would need to be in
> touch with the press constantly to tell them things
> like:
> * PG is a great back for windows clients using
> ODBC/MS Access/Excel
> * PG is a "real" database comparable to Oracle
> * PG costs nothing
> * Free support is fabulous, and paid support is
> available
> * Development is constant
>
> In the end, I believe that PG needs to move into an
> organizational
> structure so that its considerable assets can be
> fully realized, its
> wonderful developers may be fully compensated, and
> commercial users (our
> bread and butter), can have an official place to
> help sponsor features
> of the system and so on. All this is more than a
> website. Someone posted
> pictures of the PG booth at a show recently. It was
> nice, but there was
> this one sad guy shrouded in darkness -- I felt
> depressed, because
> that's how PG advocacy felt.
>
> Warm regards,
> Ericson Smith
> DBA/Developer
>
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
> | http://www.did-it.com | "When I'm paid, I always
> |
> | er**@did-it.com | follow the job through.
> |
> | 516-255-0500 | You know that." -Angel
> Eyes|
>
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
>
>
>
>
> Karsten Hilbert wrote:
>
> >>I'm in a similar situation. My app is currently
> PG-only (although I
> >>_might_ be able to get it work with Firebird
> eventually). Currently I have
> >>to sell Linux to prospective clients in addition
> to my app. A native
> >>Windows version would make my life a bit easier.
> >>
> >>
> >Same here.
> >
> >Our "clients" use legacy medical office software
> that 99% runs
> >on Windows. We offer add-ons (tailored
> mini-versions of our
> >main application :-) and thus get OSS (Python,
> PostgreSQL,
> >wxWindows, sometimes Linux itself) into their
> offices and onto
> >their networks. Most of the time the main
> difficulty is to figure
> >out how to offer PostgreSQL in their environment
> (yes, we know
> >about CygWin).
> >
> >("clients" because we don't do business as in
> selling stuff)
> >
> >Karsten Hilbert, MD
> >
> >www.gnumed.org
> >
> >
> > begin:vcard
> fn:Ericson Smith
> n:Smith;Ericson
> org:Did-it.com;Programming
> adr:#304;;55 Maple Avenue;Rockville
> Center;NY;11570;USA
> email;internet:er**@did-it.com
> title:Web Developer
> tel;work:516-255-0500
> tel;cell:646-483-3420
> note:Nothing special!
> x-mozilla-html:FALSE
> url:http://www.did-it.com
> version:2.1
> end:vcard
>
> >
> ---------------------------(end of
> broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 8: explain analyze is your friend
>
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519 939 0336
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TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives?
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Dave,
I'm not trying to be curt with you or anything but a serious questions, did you
not see the links on the right side of http://www.postgresql.org under where it
says websites?
--
Dave Cramer
519 939 0336
ICQ # 1467551
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TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Quoting "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com>: This concerns me. This is the second time recently someone has said somethingis NOT documented and it it turn out it is.
So my question is (no offense to anyone) are the web sites not "clear"
enough tofind information quickly or are people just being lax/lazy when they are
searching.
Well, at anything greater than 1024x768 the "docs" link on the main site
is near invisible. The font size is fine, but combined with the color scheme
and location, it can be hard to spot... Mainly, I think because the page
is so busy.
Agreed- I was hoping some else would say that.
If you look at the front page the first thing you see is News which is fine,
but IMHO the first thing should be the nav bar comes before News but
News is big, bold print.
Also searching the PostgreSQL docs is a useless venture. I just typed in
trigger and hit search.... 20 seconds later I am still waiting.
I mentioned that earlier in this thread.
Why don't we just add Google search to the page?
Sincerely,
Joshua D. Drake
That and it is possible to propose a new layout. Something that is somewhat
consistant across the major sites (www,gborg,techdoc,advocacy)? And yes, I'd be
will to do some work on that.
--
Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC - S/JDBC
Postgresql support, programming, shared hosting and dedicated hosting.
+1-503-222-2783 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com
--
Keith C. Perry, MS E.E.
Director of Networks & Applications
VCSN, Inc. http://vcsn.com
____________________________________
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message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
The documentation needs to be opened up and interlinked a lot more. For
instance, one of the things that makes the PHP site work well, is
linking to related functions at the end of each function's description, eg: http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.pg-fetch-all.php
However, check our PG documentation page about the "CREATE SEQUENCE"
command: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/curre...esequence.html
That would be a prime page for linking to the sequence manupulation
functions. So as a result of this omission, we get many basic sequence
questions on the mailing list again and again. Now we would be forced
over to Google, if the internal search engine was not working. Assume I
am a newbie wanting to know how to get the last value for a sequence.. I
would type "last inserted value" into the search engine... In this
particular case, I got back no results.
Lets face it, Postgresql is great, but the docs are not. PHP was easy to
learn because of great function reference, interlinking (leads to
feature discovery) and excellent user contributed tips which are edited.
To this day, I still refer to my Postgresql Manual, because it is
actually faster to find information that way instead of on the website.
On the other hand, I never have to refer to a PHP dead tree manual.
In my humble opinion, here's what the documentation needs to make the
uptake of Postgresql better:
* A separate page for every Postgresql function
* Interlinking between related functions
* Interlinking between SQL Commands pages and function pages
* More examples of Pl/pgSQL functions
* A custom search engine to address the above -- not just sitewide search
* More encouragement of user posting to each manual page
* Comprehensive migration section (Oracle => PG, MySQL =>PG), not just
Pl/pgSQL examples!
I dunno, maybe as users of Postgresql, we could pool together some money
($50 each as a new year present), and get the PHP documentation guys to
help us out? They might be more inclined to, since they are dropping
MySQL from inclusion in PHP. My first $50 is ready to go if someone
organizes this stuff and gives me a Paypal email address to send funds
to. Everyone here has a vested interest in Postgresql (heck, my job
depends on it).
Let's give the documentation writers an applause, but at this point, it
really needs to move to the next level folks. Now let me get back to
migrating to 7.4 :-)
Warmest regards,
Ericson Smith
Tracking Specialist/DBA
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
| http://www.did-it.com | "When I'm paid, I always |
| er**@did-it.com | follow the job through. |
| 516-255-0500 | You know that." -Angel Eyes|
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
Dave Cramer wrote: Keith,
Oh, there it is, in tiny print.
Dave
On Mon, 2003-12-29 at 15:03, Keith C. Perry wrote:
Quoting Dave Cramer <pg@fastcrypt.com>:
Jeff,
I agree; we have an apparent lack of awareness of many things. IMO this
is more indicative of a lack of a unified presence than anything else.
part of the project is on gborg, part of the project is on advocacy,
.... etc.
How would a newbie know to go look for advocacy.postgresql.org ?.
Dave
On Mon, 2003-12-29 at 10:18, Jeff Eckermann wrote:
This has been an interesting thread, with lots of well
considered contributions. The consensus seems to be
"PostgreSQL is plenty good enough and more, we just
need more people to know it, and an easier learning
path".
What bothers me a little here is an apparent lack of
awareness of the work of the Advocacy Group. They
have been organized for a little over one full release
cycle, but have already begun to achieve some
impressive things. The release of version 7.4 saw a
well prepared press release, which was subsequently
picked up by journalists and featured (often lifted
word for word) in articles in a variety of IT industry
publications around the world. The effect was to get
our marketing material in front of the eyes of many
readers, without them having to go looking for it at
all. When did that happen before?
I cite that as just one example of what can be
achieved by an organized and co-ordinated approach,
which is just what the Advocacy Group is working on.
The scope for more development along these lines is
huge, all that is needed is the passage of time, and
hopefully more contributions from more people. I
recommend to all those whose interest was caught by
this thread to check out the pgsql-advocacy list, if
you have not already done so, and think about what you
might be able to add. In answer to the obvious
question, I have been lurking on that list for a
while, and intend to make a contribution where I feel
fitted to do so.
Maybe we need to invent some new solutions, but for
advocacy at least, we already have one.
--- Ericson Smith <er**@did-it.com> wrote:
>A documentation system like the one over at
>http://php.net, would be
>fantastic for Postgresql. There could be lookups
>based on SQL commands,
>Functions, and Sitewide Searches. This alone would
>go a long way to
>expose PHP to "the masses".
>
>In terms of using MySQL or Postgresql, lets all face
>it, most data
>storage work could be easily and efficiently handled
>by text files,
>since there needs to be just infrequent inserts and
>updates, and mostly
>reads. The majority of interfaces exposed on the web
>follow this
>paradigm, and include:
>* Content management
>* Catalogs
>* Shopping cart stuff
>* User management
>
>Yes, our powerful and easy to use PG can do all of
>that too, but SQLite,
>Sleepycat DBM files and MySQL can do it as well.
>There are going to be
>even more migrations for Oracle to MySQL than from
>Oracle to PG, because
>so many of those Oracle installations were overkill
>in the first place.
>Our place is in that hoary back end that runs the
>world, the un-sexy
>part of any organization that no one outside of the
>Development team, or
>System Administrators know about.
>
>Getting mindshare is a different problem. That
>requires PG to have a
>full time effective press person. This press person
>would need to be in
>touch with the press constantly to tell them things
>like:
>* PG is a great back for windows clients using
>ODBC/MS Access/Excel
>* PG is a "real" database comparable to Oracle
>* PG costs nothing
>* Free support is fabulous, and paid support is
>available
>* Development is constant
>
>In the end, I believe that PG needs to move into an
>organizational
>structure so that its considerable assets can be
>fully realized, its
>wonderful developers may be fully compensated, and
>commercial users (our
>bread and butter), can have an official place to
>help sponsor features
>of the system and so on. All this is more than a
>website. Someone posted
>pictures of the PG booth at a show recently. It was
>nice, but there was
>this one sad guy shrouded in darkness -- I felt
>depressed, because
>that's how PG advocacy felt.
>
>Warm regards,
>Ericson Smith
>DBA/Developer
>
>
>
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
>| http://www.did-it.com | "When I'm paid, I always
>|
>| er**@did-it.com | follow the job through.
>|
>| 516-255-0500 | You know that." -Angel
>Eyes|
>
>
>
+-----------------------+----------------------------+
>
>
>Karsten Hilbert wrote:
>
>
>
>>>I'm in a similar situation. My app is currently
>>>
>>>
>PG-only (although I
>
>
>>>_might_ be able to get it work with Firebird
>>>
>>>
>eventually). Currently I have
>
>
>>>to sell Linux to prospective clients in addition
>>>
>>>
>to my app. A native
>
>
>>>Windows version would make my life a bit easier.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Same here.
>>
>>Our "clients" use legacy medical office software
>>
>>
>that 99% runs
>
>
>>on Windows. We offer add-ons (tailored
>>
>>
>mini-versions of our
>
>
>>main application :-) and thus get OSS (Python,
>>
>>
>PostgreSQL,
>
>
>>wxWindows, sometimes Linux itself) into their
>>
>>
>offices and onto
>
>
>>their networks. Most of the time the main
>>
>>
>difficulty is to figure
>
>
>>out how to offer PostgreSQL in their environment
>>
>>
>(yes, we know
>
>
>>about CygWin).
>>
>>("clients" because we don't do business as in
>>
>>
>selling stuff)
>
>
>>Karsten Hilbert, MD
>>
>>www.gnumed.org
>>
>>
>>begin:vcard
>>
>>
>fn:Ericson Smith
>n:Smith;Ericson
>org:Did-it.com;Programming
>adr:#304;;55 Maple Avenue;Rockville
>Center;NY;11570;USA
>email;internet:er**@did-it.com
>title:Web Developer
>tel;work:516-255-0500
>tel;cell:646-483-3420
>note:Nothing special!
>x-mozilla-html:FALSE
>url:http://www.did-it.com
>version:2.1
>end:vcard
>
>
>
>---------------------------(end of
>broadcast)---------------------------
>TIP 8: explain analyze is your friend
>
>
>
__________________________________
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519 939 0336
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TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives?
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Dave,
I'm not trying to be curt with you or anything but a serious questions, did you
not see the links on the right side of http://www.postgresql.org under where it
says websites?
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
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Tony wrote: I already had in the first post I replied to, but at the risk of
sounding redundant, I'll say it again.
Views: When I came to PG I didn't know what they were, saw no point
to them (still don't) why do you need a function to provide details of
a query when a more complicated query gives the same data? Are they
designed for people who don't like to type long queries?
They are designed for several things IMHO.
1. So I don't have to type long queries.
2. So I can have a base query and just append where clauses, joins
etc... as I need.
3. So I can provide permissions based on the view, not the table itself
-- thus lending to a more flexible acl model.
Sincerely,
Joshua D. Drake
--
Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC - S/JDBC
Postgresql support, programming, shared hosting and dedicated hosting.
+1-503-222-2783 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Tony wrote: I already had in the first post I replied to, but at the risk of
sounding redundant, I'll say it again.
Views: When I came to PG I didn't know what they were, saw no point
to them (still don't) why do you need a function to provide details of
a query when a more complicated query gives the same data? Are they
designed for people who don't like to type long queries?
Personally I find views useful because I can hide the details of the
database internals from the application. Hence they provide an
"interface" level abstraction. This is very important if you want to
isolate the database and application development.
I've never seen that stated in a document.
Stored Procedures: Sounds good in principle, but in what ways can I
benefit most (I understand this now) at the time of moving to PG, I
couldn't see the difference between writing my code in an a Stored
Proc or an API.
I don't understand what you mean here/
This isn't definitive list but more of a flavour of the obstacles I
hit when I first met PG. If I hadn't persevered (and many may not)
I'd have ended up with a PG server full of DBs designed and built as
if they were on a MySQL server.
Yep - I see that alot.
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
On Mon, Dec 29, 2003 at 15:51:00 -0500,
Ericson Smith <er**@did-it.com> wrote:
Lets face it, Postgresql is great, but the docs are not. PHP was easy to
learn because of great function reference, interlinking (leads to
feature discovery) and excellent user contributed tips which are edited.
To this day, I still refer to my Postgresql Manual, because it is
actually faster to find information that way instead of on the website.
On the other hand, I never have to refer to a PHP dead tree manual.
Once you know where to look for stuff it isn't that hard to find things.
This is one of the advantages of reading through the whole manual once
to get an idea of whats there.
When I need to look things up for Postgres I use a local copy of the web
based documentation.
In my humble opinion, here's what the documentation needs to make the
uptake of Postgresql better:
* A separate page for every Postgresql function
I don't like this. It will make scrolling through a group of related
functions harder. Name anchors can be used to allow links directly to
functions.
* A custom search engine to address the above -- not just sitewide search
* More encouragement of user posting to each manual page
Do you see these two points as applying to only the copy of the
documentation on the Postgres web site, or do you see this being distributed
either with the database (as the current documentation is) or as
a separate item (like some of the clients are)?
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SNIP Many of these subjects already *are* covered in the Tutorial. Just
looking in the 7.4 table of contents, I see
3. Advanced Features
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Views
3.3. Foreign Keys
3.4. Transactions
3.5. Inheritance
3.6. Conclusion
The discussions are skimpy and could use fleshed out a little, no doubt.
(Anyone who wants to contribute material is surely welcome to.)
SNIP
This concerns me. This is the second time recently someone has said something
is NOT documented and it it turn out it is.
So my question is (no offense to anyone) are the web sites not "clear"
enough to
find information quickly or are people just being lax/lazy when they are
searching.
No offence.. but..
Not clear enough? Not sure. What I do think is that some pages do not go
into greater detail where they could and imo should.
I have presented this before as an example. If you install PG you're
supposed to create a user postgres but nobody writes about what shell that
user needs and even if that user is supposed to have a shell at all..
homedir etc?? dunno..
Another example? alright, data types. I found a very helpful list at the
website but I didn't see the limitations per type (maximum lenght like
MySQL says varchar max 255), or is it hidden somewhere on the PG website?.
While working on PG with PHP I noticed several warnings and notices. The PG
docs did mention all of them but not if they are good or bad so the hunting
continues via google.
FWIW, if you feed the message to the PG search it doesn't return anything.
It would certainly help if the docs would clarify if something is good or bad.
Some messages ago I saw someone writing about something like "this is the
manual not handholding". IMO there is a difference between a well written
and complete manual and handholding.
Having said that, I realise it's a lot of work to keep good documentation
into synch with development..
If find the search on Postgresql.org slow and not always very logical, but
I think that has been said before..
B.
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