In terms of using MySQL or Postgresql, lets all face it, most data storage work could be easily and efficiently handled by text files, since there needs to be just infrequent inserts and updates, and mostly reads. The majority of interfaces exposed on the web follow this paradigm, and include:
* Content management
* Catalogs
* Shopping cart stuff
* User management
Yes, our powerful and easy to use PG can do all of that too, but SQLite, Sleepycat DBM files and MySQL can do it as well. There are going to be even more migrations for Oracle to MySQL than from Oracle to PG, because so many of those Oracle installations were overkill in the first place. Our place is in that hoary back end that runs the world, the un-sexy part of any organization that no one outside of the Development team, or System Administrators know about.
Getting mindshare is a different problem. That requires PG to have a full time effective press person. This press person would need to be in touch with the press constantly to tell them things like:
* PG is a great back for windows clients using ODBC/MS Access/Excel
* PG is a "real" database comparable to Oracle
* PG costs nothing
* Free support is fabulous, and paid support is available
* Development is constant
In the end, I believe that PG needs to move into an organizational structure so that its considerable assets can be fully realized, its wonderful developers may be fully compensated, and commercial users (our bread and butter), can have an official place to help sponsor features of the system and so on. All this is more than a website. Someone posted pictures of the PG booth at a show recently. It was nice, but there was this one sad guy shrouded in darkness -- I felt depressed, because that's how PG advocacy felt.
Warm regards, Ericson Smith
DBA/Developer
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Karsten Hilbert wrote:
I'm in a similar situation. My app is currently PG-only (although I _might_ be able to get it work with Firebird eventually). Currently I have to sell Linux to prospective clients in addition to my app. A native Windows version would make my life a bit easier.Same here.
Our "clients" use legacy medical office software that 99% runs on Windows. We offer add-ons (tailored mini-versions of our main application :-) and thus get OSS (Python, PostgreSQL, wxWindows, sometimes Linux itself) into their offices and onto their networks. Most of the time the main difficulty is to figure out how to offer PostgreSQL in their environment (yes, we know about CygWin).
("clients" because we don't do business as in selling stuff)
Karsten Hilbert, MD
www.gnumed.org
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