Re: Survey: MySQL vs PostgreSQL for PHP

>I've been using MySQL/PHP for quite some time. Several months ago, I >wanted to port a project over to PostgreSQL. I found everything about pg >(eg the website, documentation, installation process) far less straight >ahead than MySQL. So much so, that I didn't get around to actually >installing pg. I actually found PostgreSQL more straight-forward, since the arguments are required. (Or used to be.) So I better understood what was going on in PostgreSQL. Not as many examples "out there" but, really, changing: mysql_query($query) to pg_exec($connection, $query) in reading the examples is not that tricky... Oh well. Different tastes for different folks. >Plus, as others have pointed out, the supporting functions in PHP aren't >as powerful/diverse. For example, there's no insert id function. Yes, there *IS* such a function, but it's a two-step process. $oid = pg_getlastoid() followed by a SELECT ... where oid = $oid http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.pg-last-oid.php OID stands for "Object ID", and every PosgreSQL object has a unique OID. Every row, every Large Object, every everything. Whoops. Just double-checked, and apparently pSQL 7.2 doesn't *have* to have OIDs for everything. This could get interesting, folks... A quick perusal of the PHP Docs makes me say: Only get rid of the optional OID if you are 100% sure you'll never need go use pg_last_oid() or you'll be in deep trouble. You do *NOT* want to "just use the oid as my own id" however. OIDs can change when you export/import database data, if you're not careful, and it's just bad form to use that internal ID as your own. PostgreSQL (and any SQL database) would be completely un-usable (*) if there wasn't some way to reliably get the last tuple inserted from your own connection. Kinda funny that never made it into SQL92 :-) (*) Yeah, okay, you can generate your own unique ID before the insert, and then SELECT on that to get the auto-generated ID... Might as well not bother with an auto-generated ID, then, eh? -- Like Music? http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm