Re: Is my lecturer wrong about PostgreSQL? I think he is!

> 
> Now, I have four questions:
> 
> 1) Is my lecturer full of it or does he really have a point?

Hallo Pol,

i don't know, a also teaching a databases,
personally i never experienced this

sometimes people are really a fan of certain product,
sometimes in combination with the thought that all other products are
bad; i don't know if this is the case, you could compare it with
soccer, a barcalona fan will never become a real madrid fan and vice
versa; so "rational" decisions (at first, based on some reasoning) tend
to get loaded emotional feelings.

in these kind of discussions both parties should have there say,
not just one (in this case you, we haven't heard the teacher) 

there is no such thing as a perfect dbms,
nor postgres, nor oracle, nor ..,

> 
> 2) The actual concrete acknowledged problem with fsync that affected
> PostgreSQL - why didn't it affect Oracle? Or MySQL? Or did it but it
> was so rare that it never became apparent - it wasn't that obvious
> with PostgreSQL either - one of those rare and intermittent problems?

you can set fsync to off (not default), for more performance,
but it comes with the cost of D in ACID, you no longer have it 

> 
> 3) Were there ever any problems with BSD?

as far as i understand BSD and variants are very solid,
so good for server use, not for desktop 

> 
> 4) What is the OS of choice for *_serious_* PostgreSQL installations?

it depends,

if transparancy is important to you, choose an opensource os
if time is important to you, choose what you already know
if you are willing to spent time on it, i would personally choose a
linux, bsd or solaris based os

if it helps:
i my case, i had to make a decision about the dbms for the classes as
well, the reasons i have choosen postgres are in a nutshell:
* free
* open
* runs good on servers that are comparable with an average desktop pc
or better
* close to ISO sql standard (the reason why i didn't choose mysql/now
mariadb)
* seems to have a future
-* within all these, postgres seems to have implemented most features
* after using it for a while (18 years now), i should now add: a great
community

some links:
https://www.top500.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DB-Engines_ranking
https://db-engines.com/en/ranking

> 
> I hope that I have been clear, but should anyone require any
> clarification, please don't hesitate to ask me.
> 
> Tia and rgs,
> 
> Pól...
> 
> 
-- 
mvg,
Wim Bertels
--
Lector
UC Leuven-Limburg
--
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
        -- Mark Twain