Re: A newbie's opinion - postgres NEEDS a Windows binary!

--- "Robert J. Sanford, Jr." <rsanford@nolimitsystems.com> wrote:
>    my personal belief is that a win32 native version of postgres
>    would resolve the connection issues and allow many more people
>    to adopt postgres.

I totally agree with you, but as I explain below that really cannot
happen.

>    this is of course coming from someone that isn't contributing
>    to the code base and will therefore only "complain" about this
>    this one time and will accept any virtual beatings you care to
>    deliver ;)
>
>    given that i don't have any grasp of the postgres code base any
>    suggestion that i offer up will be simply grasping at straws.
>    i do know that the apache group has had similar problems with
>    win2k and their new architecture is targeted at resolving
>    multi-platform issues by providing a platform independent layer
>    for networking and file manipulation. their performance under
>   win2k is orders of
>    magnitude better not having to go through the posix layer. my
>    guess is that this required a near total rewrite on their part
>    and would probably require the same on the part of the postgres
>    team.

PostgreSQL is built with a multi-process model, rather than a
multi-threaded model such as MySQL.  The win32 platform cannot handle
a multi-process model and probably never will (it would not be in
MS's best interests nowadays anyway).  This is what makes a port a
major difficulty and would set the PostgreSQL team back months to
years in development time.  IMHO it is much more important to
increase the functionality, stability, and speed of the *NIX version.
 If you want to use PostgreSQL in a production environment then pick
up a copy of Linux or FreeBSD.  These OSes a load easier to learn,
use, and maintain than you win32-only people would think.  I am a
win32 to Linux convert so you will have to trust me on this ;)  Plus,
you can use any number of GUI tools that run on win32 to manipulate
PostgreSQL: Access, Webmin, Putty, Winsql, phpPgAdmin.

Brent

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! GeoCities - quick and easy web site hosting, just $8.95/month.
http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/info1