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Re: Ubunto

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Martin Gregorie wrote:
> Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> Martin Gregorie wrote:
>>> Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>> I don't think Derby and PostgreSQL are alternatives.
>>>>
>>>> You could use Derby for your development incl. unit test because it is
>>>> practically no install/config and PostgreSQL for your QA and
>>>> production for the reliability and performance.
>>>>
>>> Of course, but with PostgreSQL installed and running, the effort needed
>>> to add a new project/database/call it what you will is probably the
>>> same as it would be with Derby - and I don't need to learn another
>>> database's SQL syntax quirks to do it.
>> 
>> But that is because you have have PostgreSQL installed and running.
>>
> True, but IIRC the initial install of PostgreSQL was pretty much a no-
> brainer too. 
> 
> The only non-straightforwardness I remember was due to me modifying the 
> installation to move the physical database from the /var tree to /home 
> for system management reasons. I've arranged my system so that /home is 
> in a separate partition and that /usr/local and /usr/java as well as all 
> PostgreSQL and Apache related user data are there as well. This means 
> that, for a clean Linux install I can reformat everything on disk except 
> the /home partition and know that nothing I care about will need to be 
> restored.

For development purposes, the default installation of Postgres works pretty well.  For production purposes, as with any DBMS, the situation can be more complicated.

There are many goals you want a DBMS to achieve.  Most people seem to talk about speed or ease of use as if reliability were taken for granted. First and foremost, the prime directive of any data store is to be reliable.  Ancillary to that the management protocols for the system should not impede keeping a system reliable.  (The violation of this was my main complaint with MySQL.  I don't know if they fixed it.)  We do want the system to be of low footprint appropriate to the application domain.  Fast enough for the project usage. Scalable likewise.

Postgres and Derby both tend to win in another important area - standardness of the SQL dialect.  

Postgres reaches down pretty far into the low end of scale, but obviously not quite as far as Derby.  Conversely, Derby does quite well into higher scale, but obviously not quite as far as Postgres.

If you're doing a lot of enterprise or web work you should consider Postgres  strong contender.  Even during development, it mixes well with the enterprise way of looking at things (layered and componentized).  Porting a system from Postgres to, say, Oracle or DB2 turns out to be not so bad.  Of course no two RDBMSes speak the same dialect of SQL, but the transformations between the big guns seem to be mostly mechanical - Oracle uses VARCHAR2 for VARCHAR, for example.  It's harder when a system decides to reinvent the semantics of a keyword to something rather different, as MySQL did with TIMESTAMP.

That's just one scenario where one might find advantage to Postgres.  Of course, the same arguments apply to the free versions of Oracle and DB2, to a point.

For desktop distribution Derby may well be the ideal solution.  For a desktop app needing more than desktop-scale data, perhaps a distributed DBMS architecture - keep the local DB as a sort of edge cache for wide-area data.

I put forward this pie in the sky to point out that different systems fill different niches.  I observe that between them, Derby and PostgreSQL cover the gamut of RDBMS needs and could even complement each other.  Solid products, open source, span the use case range: no need for me to hunt further.  (This does not preclude reaching for non-RDBMS solutions.)

-- 
Lew

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Thread

Re: Ubunto Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2011-11-06 15:47 -0500
  Re: Ubunto Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2011-11-06 22:49 +0000
    Re: Ubunto Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2011-11-06 17:13 -0800
      Re: Ubunto Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2011-11-07 23:49 +0000
        Re: Ubunto markspace <-@.> - 2011-11-07 21:07 -0800

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