----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Peligro" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2002 10:08 AM Subject: Re: [plug] Re: Open-source database evaluation
> Can Firebird and PostgreSQL handle transactions with fine-granularity? My experience is mainly with working with Postgres and I can say that Postgres can undo transactions as long as the SQL statements are not COMMITed. You can simply use ROLLBACK. > It's funny how Progress database can grow beyond 2GB in NT4.0. We'd love to > span the database across multiple files in a RAID setup, but we haven't > figured out how to do it before with NT. We need to study this filesize limit > in Firebird on Linux extensively. The Postgresql documentation states that there is no limit to the size of the database and that 60 GB databases do exist. The maximum size for an individual table is 64 TerraBytes. From my own experience I've been able to cram 6 CD's worth of plain text data (that's 650 MB x 6 = 3.9 GB) into one database without doing any changes at the filesystem level (if youre running linux) and database design level. > Is it safe to assume that Firebird can be spanned and RAIDed at the same time > in Linux? (There goes my awkward English again.) In Postgres, you initialize an entire linux directory to house your database. This directory can be (ahem) RAIDed (that is, the directory actually represents several hardisks configured to use RAID) if you so choose. > Views, triggers, and stored procedures are important functionalities that we > use. Postgresql fully supports views, triggers and stored procedures. Just choose the languages your most comfortable withy -- Ansi SQL, perl or python. > In Firebird, is there a way to temporarily prevent triggers and stored > procedures from firing? In Progress, we sometimes suspend triggers and stored > procedures on special occassions (with a 4GL environment statement > DISABLE-TRIGGERS) such as during dumping and reloading data from corrupted > databases? Dumping and reloading is easy to do in Progress. A few mouse > clicks in the Data Administration GUI, leave it for a while, then I'm done. > > We also sometimes disable stored procedures and triggers during application > development. It is nice to do this once in a while to test the application. In Postgres, you can get the same functionality, albiet a little mastery of the CLI is needed. You just need to create a text file containing the code for the creation of the storred procedue/table constraint/trigger. You can then run the text file from the psql command line. To deactivitate them, all you do is use the DROP commands (drop trigger/drop rule) to stop an particular trigger or stored procedure from activating when an event occurs. You can get your business done and then re-load the rules/triggers from the text files as before. > It's nice to hear Firebird has an extremely small footprint, and I presume it > can run comfortably on the Proliant. I've been able to run Postgresql on a PI-133 running GNU/Linux. > What application development tool works well with Firebird, or provides a > somewhat nice and tight compatible integration with Firebird? Since Firebird > is from Borland, I presume the RAD IDE to use is Kylix3? Postgres has a GUI tool for basic database design/management and forms development included with the standard source distibution. You'll need GNU/Linux and certain perl libraries to use them. Also, because Postgres was designed to be strictly a database server, you have the option choosing what front-end GUI technologies and platforms you want and need. These can range from a web-based approach (using PHP/Apache and a browser) to more Microsoft oriented technologies (such as using Visual Basic and Microsoft Data Access Components like ADO and OLEDB) to GNU/Linux technologies (such as Perl DBI (if you like perl), or Kylix or Kdevelop (for the KDE desktop)). The point here is as a developer/data administrator, it always important that you have choices in your immplementation depending on your budget and available resources. > > Firebird also has array datatypes. MySQL doesn't. PostgreSQL, not sure. Postgresql has array datatypes as well as polygonal datatypes (in case you want to integrate maps and other graphical data into the database) > I'm also beginning to see how other open-source database stacks up to our > Progress database. That's nice to hear. : ) > Newer versions of the Progress AppServer has push and pull features (new 4GL > statements like SUBSCRIBE and PUBLISH) similar to messaging systems, plus > support for safe manipulation by PHP. PHP also supports direct interaction with Postgresql databases. The only feature I wish the developers could add is something similar to the PIVOT command in MS SQL Server. One of the earlier messages around this thread also asked what happens when in the middle of a transaction, power was cut to the server. Postgresql automatically Rollsback the database to a state before the transaction was committed/completed. As also mentioned in previous messages, you can use UnixODBC to connect to a Postgres database, but you can also use the ODBC drivers specific to Postgres. These are being developed by another group of hackers seperate from the main Postgres developers. Best of luck. Igs _ Philippine Linux Users Group. 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