PostgreSQL Advocacy, Thoughts and Comments

Hi All,

I've just been reading an article in PHP Architect magazine
(http://www.phparch.com) which is the cover story for October called
"Migrating from MySQL to PostgreSQL". I must say that this is a highly
compelling article, especially for me, and is aimed at programmers that
aren't necessarilly SQL experts or DBAs. For instance, like many PHP
Web developers who use MySQL instead of flat files to store stuff!
Instead of using a DB as a powerful tool. This article presents reasons
as to why a more standards compliant DB is good for programmers, and why
in some cases MySQL can be less of a friend to programmers than perhaps
PostgreSQL.

I honestly believe that if the advocates of PostgreSQL wrote an article
or case study along the lines of this article, it would go a long way to
attracting many more programmers. In my experience all of the articles
and tutorials are written from the perspective of why PG is a better DB
as a DB. Rather than emphasise aspects like "PG is great because you
can move complicated code like this <insert complicated PHP/Perl code
here> ..... normally dealt programatically to your DB which can be both
faster and applied to any other programmers (VB, Java) that you are
sharing the important enterprise data with. I've not seen anything in
articles aimed at PHP/MySQL users saying, "Hey, look at how these
triggers can make your life soooo much easier" or "Hey, look at how
cascading can save you oh so much coding" or "Hey look at all this
programmatical logic that can be put into queries just by writing your
own functions"

I have recently compared the PostgreSQL users to the Debian users (meant
as a complement) by the fact that they are in general highly
knowledgable of thier own subject and peripheral subjects too. They are
passionate and well versed, and happy to nudge people in the direction
of enlightenment without spoonfeeding them. But in the same way, the
advocacy (IMHO) falls into the same boat as Debian. There is a certain
self-assuredness that PostgreSQL is a far superior product and if
someone can't see how obvious that is then maybe PG isn't for them (a
little harsh I know but I'm trying to illustrate a point).

My point is that there are thousands, tens of thousands of programmers
out there, that need to know why and how PG is so great. My eyes have
now been fully opened by this article, and got rid of my nagging feeling
that there was something great about PG that I "Just wasn't grasping,
and couldn't put my finger on". Maybe the advocacy team should be
aiming for all those programmers that desperately need PG, but don't
know it yet, and probably don't have time to garner enough DB experience
to understand why they need it!

Sadly the PHP Architect article is not free, I bought the electronic
magazine for about $2, but believe it's worth every penny and more.

Just my 2 cents.

Apologies if the PG articles ARE out there and please notice that my
comments do not say that they don't exist, but that I have never seen them.

Cheers

Tony.