Re: PostgreSQL vs InterBase

On Thu, 1 Mar 2001, Meir kriheli wrote: > I use both of the databases (Interbase 6.01 and PostgreSQL 7.1beta4). > > PostgreSQL has more features comapared to Interbase (the procedureal language > is very robust and there are many datatyps to choose from. Also you can have > some kind of object support in it to inherit tables for example), but it's > windows implemenation is very hard (at least for me, I like to compile it). Postgres also has a nasty show-stopping bug they don't seem to want to fix. Try making a stored procedure with many parameters, and send a single null to it. I dare you. I so love having all of my other parameters, and the return value of the function turned into null because postgres can't tell where a null occoured. I also love the fact that you can't drop foreign keys, modify columns, drop columns without rebuilding the entire table, etc. We use it here, but it makes me want to pull my hair out. If someone would just combine postgres and mysql, we'd have the best database in the universe. Fast and stable, with all of the RDBMS anyone could want. But as it stands, postgres is still a bit player with an incomplete feature set. But I don't want to start a holy war here, so I'll drop it. > As for speed both are very fast (even when compared to commerical DB, in my > tests the deafult install of Interbase outperfomed the default install of > Oracle 8i about 10X, tested on P166 with 96MB and PII400 with 192MB). This only occours if you don't know how to optimize Oracle. Oracle is *very* picky about *everything*. You need index tablespaces on separate disks from the data tablespaces, and yet another one for system tablespaces. You should also have one for archive logs, redo logs, and of course your temporary tables. Setting it to threading mode is also nice for connection pooling and to stop killing your machine under heavy load. That, and the machines you've quoted are in no way powerful enough for production Oracle databases, period. You should also run oracle on some kind of Solaris/Sun combo. Raw mount points direct to the actual disks is ideal, but loopback filesystems work just as well. Remember to cluster your raid into 4 - 6 arrays of 3+ disks, too. There is no such thing as a default Oracle install, because installing oracle on a single user machine with one disk and only a little ram (yes, anything under 512 is very little for Oracle) will make Oracle look like a piece of crap. The point about Oracle is that it *lets* you do all of those optimizations, and if you're good at it, it will outperform almost any other database you throw at it. Trust me on this one. -- +-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+ | Shaun M. Thomas INN Database Programmer | | Phone: (309) 743-0812 Fax : (309) 743-0830 | | Email: sthomas@townnews.com AIM : trifthen | | Web : hamster.lee.net | | | | "Most of our lives are about proving something, either to | | "ourselves or to someone else." | | -- Anonymous | +-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+