Re: What do you think?

On Thu, May 04, 2000 at 08:49:22AM +0200, Jurgen Defurne wrote:
> >
> > 2. I am an ORACLE developer. And I've been looking into PostgreSQL as an
> > alternitive to ORACLE for a company I'm working for. The DBA we have have
> > has been an ORACLE DBA for a while. So the question is, how much of a
> > difference will this be to us?
>
> I've been using Oracle for the last year in a Forms environment
> on WinNT and in a Cobol environment on HP/UX. You will probably
> miss a whole lot of administrative commands. There is an interactive
> shell, but it is nothing like Sql*Plus The last four year I have been
> working in an administrative/banking environment, so what I REALLY,
> REALLY find lacking is the support of a FIXED numeric of the kind you
> have in Oracle, Cobol, PL/SQL ! NUMERIC(width, precision). You are
> probably an American, but I wouldn't recommend using postgreSQL here
> in Europe, where you need a precision from 0 to 10 digits in financial
> calculations. Also, there is a precompiler, but only for C,

Good news, Jurgen! NUMERIC has been in there since 6.5.0, (hmm, can't
find a release date. Should ask Bruce to put a timeline somewhere)
There're a few bug fixes/feature extensions for it in 7.0 (to be released
Monday), some things like indices, arrays, log() and casting to numeric,
but otherwise, I think it's been a pretty stable basic type since it's
release. What version of PostgreSQL are you basing your comments on? You
sound fairly positive, even if you're using an older version. It's gotten
better! One of the curses of Open Source is how fast it can develop:
6.5 was a huge leap over 6.4, and 7.0 is at least as big a jump past 6.5.

Ross
--
Ross J. Reedstrom, Ph.D., <reedstrm(at)rice(dot)edu>
NSBRI Research Scientist/Programmer
Computer and Information Technology Institute
Rice University, 6100 S. Main St., Houston, TX 77005