Re: Dynamic web sites with PostgreSQL

Nicolay A. Vasiliev wrote:
> Hello, Richard, and thanks for your answer!
>
> Best of all, sorry for my poor English cause I am not a native English
> speaking man :(.

Your English is fine Nicolay - perfectly fluent AFIACT.

Oh - don't forget to CC: the list too - there are plenty more people who
can help.

>>> we afraid our MySQL won't be able to perform large amount of complex
>>> complicated queries.
>>
>> Don't be afraid, arm yourself with some facts! MySQL have a lot of
>> documentation on their website and you can always test the latest
>> version for free.
>>
>> Of course - make sure your websites are under an open-source licence
>> or you are happy paying the licence fee for the business version.
>
> We are using this dbms cause it was installed on our FreeBSD web server
> we bought from web hoster.

Ah - well there's your first point of comparison.

There are *lots* of web-hosting companies offering cheap and simple
MySQL+PHP setups.

There are *some* offering PostgreSQL/MS-SQL.

There are hardly any offering anything else.

Of course, if you have a (virtual) server then you can install what you
like. FreeBSD is a popular choice for PostgreSQL, so it's well supported
on that OS.

>> > So we get a question about altenative SQL server.
>>
>>> In fact there are not too much from open source SQL servers, I think
>>> only 2 serious: PostgreSQL and MaxDB. May I sak you about words for
>>> advocacy or accusation for each of these database servers?
>>
>> Well, you've come to a PostgreSQL list, so I'll give you two guesses
>> as to which we prefer? :-)
>
> I thought maybe anyone made such comparisons.

It's difficult to do well. What works for one person's setup doesn't for
another. You might find the following useful, but be aware that they
will probably be out of date since both have just released new versions.
  http://sql-info.de/mysql/gotchas.html
  http://sql-info.de/postgresql/postgres-gotchas.html

In general MySQL is faster for lots of simple select queries. PostgreSQL
  tends to scale better as you get more complex queries and concurrent
updates. We also take things like data integrity a lot more seriously
than MySQL AB does/has.

>> MaxDB has a lot of history, but the opinions I heard about the
>> code-base when it was first made open-source were not complimentary.
>> That may of course change, we'll have to see what Mysql AB do with it.
>>
>> You've also ignored Firebird, which has been around for a long time as
>> a Borland DB before becoming open-source. Oh, there's also Ingres
>> recently set free to roam the plains by C.A.
>>
> Oh, you're right, this make a sense (I mean Firebird). Maybe we will
> consider it as a candidate for migrating. But I've read a PostgreSQL
> documentation and I liked the PostgreSQL more than firebird (I worked
> with Interbase 5 as Delphi developer). I think PostgreSQL is reacher
> than it essentially.

Well, everyone here is happy with it. Your biggest problem may be
un-learning "MySQL habits" you've picked up.

>>> Our tasks: static content generation but using of complicated search
>>> feature on the web site.
>>
>> You haven't actually provided any information to make a decision. I'm
>> not sure in what sense you *can* generate static content from a database.
>
> If we have web pages without changings for a long time it's more simple
> to make it static basing on database info and regenerate it after this
> base info is changed.
>
>> It's also not clear what you mean by a "complicated" search.
>>
> I meant advanced search with large number of parameters, sorry for this
> trouble in formulating.

Well, our planner is quite good - no problem with multi-table joins with
a mix of parameters. It takes into account the frequency of values in a
column too - so if you were doing a name-search on the UK phone-book it
would know that an index would be good for Vasiliev, but for Smith it
might as well scan the whole table.

>> In short, the only way you'll know which database suits you is to
>> spend some time and effort testing. No-one here knows what hardware
>> you will use, operating-system details, filesystem details, database
>> size, database structure, number of users, number of concurrent
>> sessions, usage patterns, client language, application framework,
>> caching requirements, replication requirements, DBA experience, etc.
>>
> We use FreeBSD OS, our databases are about 5 Gb. Why I asked the
> community - I hoped there is some similar experience and somebody could
> help basing on this.

It's well supported on FreeBSD, and 5GB is tiny compared to some
databases discussed here.

--
   Richard Huxton
   Archonet Ltd