Re: different sort order in windows and linux version

Tomi NA wrote:
> On 6/30/06, Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog(at)svana(dot)org> wrote:
>> On Fri, Jun 30, 2006 at 11:56:19AM +0200, Dragan Matic wrote:
>> > I have two postgres servers, one on linux (fedora core 5), one on
>> > windows, both are version 8.1.4.
>> >
>
> Not beeing able to depend on the engine to consistently collate
> strings as simple as the ones Dragan listed is closer to a serious bug
> (non-deterministic behaviour in otherwise deterministic functions)
> than a RFE, but is certainly nowhere near "it's not our problem" as it
> regularly seems made up to be. The OS(es) simply and obviously
> do(es)n't do a good enough job of it.
>
I was about to say the same thing. I think that the whole point in
having a portable database system is that the data inside the database
should behave the _same way_ no matter what operating system database is
running on - client shouldn't be aware of the server OS. This is clearly
not the case here. Furthermore, the same thing happens even with en_US
(on Linux) and English_United States (on windows) collations selected,
so it is definitely a serious issue with US collation also and not with
some exotic collation orders only. I think that the only case where it
doesn't happen is when "C" collation is selected. It might be
interesting to see how this issue behaves on other operating systems.

>> In the past there have existed patches to allow postgres to use ICU for
>> locale support. It's supposedly not quite as fast, but you will be able
>> get consistant results across platforms.
>
> Personally, I'd be perfectly happy with pgsql if I could choose to
> make text operations up to 2-3x slower without the fuss of how it's
> going to work on a certain platform, in each pgsql version.
> Furthermore, compiling the server myself is not an option for live
> usage: on my current project, I'm not even the one installing the
> database servers...sending administrators a binary I configured and
> compiled (on Windows, in this case!) and noone but me
> tested...brrrr...I get the shivers just thinking about it.
Recompiling is not an option for me also, I mean I could do it for
an in-house servers where I am in charge, but our application runs on
many places and on many servers where recompiling postgres with some
third-party patches is out of the question. I think the solution where
postgres would be slower but behaved the same way on all supported
operating systems would also be acceptable for most people.

Dragan