Re: Porting Applications to Postgres

On Aug 16, 2006, at 06:19, Rich Shepard wrote:

> When I expressed my frustration at last night's meeting on the
> number of
> business applications hard-wired for MySQL, David mentioned that the
> postgres community offers porting help to developers of those
> applications.
>
> With whom do I get in touch to discuss this issue?

Snippet from IRC (agliodbs is Josh Berkus, justatheory is yours
truly, xzilla is Robert Treat):

agliodbs: justatheory: anyway, the question is, "who to bug about what?"
[16:37] aurynn joined the chat room.
[16:38] justatheory: agliodbs: I mentioned to Richard that I knew
that there were Pg folks interesting in helping port OSS projects to
PostgreSQL. He wants to know how to find someone to help him with the
project he needs runing on PostgreSQL.
[16:38] justatheory: A CRM
[16:38] justatheory: app
[16:40] agliodbs: ah, ok
[16:41] agliodbs: try pgsql-advocacy .... or is there a pgsql-php
list of some kind, xzilla?
[16:41] lyken: which crm?
[16:41] justatheory: XRMS
[16:43] justatheory: http://xrms.sourceforge.net/
[16:43] xzilla: there is a pgsql-php list, though i would probably
suggest -advocacy or -general
[16:43] agliodbs: ok
[16:43] xzilla: what does he mean by "help" ?
[16:43] agliodbs: justatheory: on the other hand, there are CRMs
which already support Postgres
[16:44] lyken: sugar?
[16:44] justatheory: agliodbs: He says he's done lot of research and
that this is the one that comes closest to what he needs.
[16:44] justatheory: shrugs
[16:44] agliodbs: lyken: no, not until they do 2.0
[16:44] agliodbs: justatheory: ok
[16:44] agliodbs: justatheory: point him to pgsql-advocacy then to
recruit help.
[16:44] justatheory: sugar is Oracle only, no?
[16:44] justatheory: agliodbs: Okay, will do.
[16:44] aaron_ joined the chat room.

[16:47] justatheory: xzilla: He says the developers are interested.
[16:47] lyken: then give them some pg books
[16:48] lyken: or get them some training :-)
[16:48] xzilla: i can recommend a php / pg book if they need :-P

So: Try pgsql-advocacy. Subscribe here:

http://www.postgresql.org/community/lists/

> My need (and that of others who have contacted me about the same
> issue) is
> with XRMS <http://xrms.sourceforge.org/>. While I'm not a fan of
> web-based
> applications, I'm apparently in the minority on this issue, so I
> just shrug
> and use them because I have no options.

I think you meant

http://xmrs.sourceforge.net/

> Xrms is the best I've seen in the sales administration/customer
> (client)
> relationship management arena. It's written in php and uses the
> ADOdb dbms
> abstraction toolkit. When I inquired about difficulties supporting
> postgres
> on the ADOdb mail list, I learned that it's very easy to write a
> mysql-
> specific application using adodb to communicate between the
> middleware and
> the dbms backend. Apparently, use of postgres reserved words and
> mysql-
> specific extensions or non-compliant syntax are the most likely
> stumbling
> blocks.

Yeah, not surprising.

> Last January, I saw interest in porting the application to
> postgres in the
> xrms web forum. I added my support to the request. Since then, I've
> done
> some work in terms of table and attribute name capitalization for
> the xrms
> developer who is looking at the postgres port. However, over the
> past month
> or so he does not respond to my emails offering help if he provides
> me with
> direction.

I hate when that happens.

> It would probably take too much time and effort to port xrms into
> a stand
> alone application using python and the wxPython UI toolset. But, if
> those
> who know much more about postgres and php than do I can get the
> xrms project
> leader to agree to accept help, then those of us who have neither
> the need
> nor the desire for multiple dbms' on our systems, each to support a
> specific application, would be grateful.

The pgsql-advocacy list is probably a good starting point. There
should be some decent PHP/PostgreSQL hackers there to at least make
suggestions.

HTH,

David