I agree with you practical points....I qualified my comments by saying....theoretically speaking....
Cheers Medi On Nov 26, 2007 8:01 AM, Chris Browne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] ("Medi Montaseri") writes: > > But theoretically speaking, 32 or 64-bit ness of the application (ie the > postmaster server) should not influence the data types offered by a > particular DB > > version. That is the semantics of data types and cpu-arch (register > width, big endian, little endian, sparc, mips, x86), etc ) offered by a > particular DB > > version should be orthogonal. > > A practical example is when I first begin my business on a Mac, then I > move the database to a Sun and then on to a mainframe.... > > That's well and fine, but the point is that when those (reasonably > generic!) data types get compiled into code for a particular platform, > with particular endianness and word size, how it is optimal to > represent them will vary based on the characteristics of the platform. > > As a result, not only do you need different executable binaries each > platform, but you also need different binary database structures on > each platform. > > A conceptually mitigating factor should be that by the time you get > around to changing platforms, there will likely be a Newer, Better, > Major PostgreSQL version available. So you should be considering > doing a migration from "old, slower, inferior version on the inferior > platform" to the "better, stronger, faster version on the superior > platform." With THAT context, the need to run initdb is further > "given." > -- > output = ("cbbrowne" "@" "linuxdatabases.info") > http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbbrowne/x.html > "Have you noticed that, when we were young, we were told that > `everybody else is doing it' was a really stupid reason to do > something, but now it's the standard reason for picking a particular > software package?" -- Barry Gehm > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to > choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not > match >