Re: minimum hardware requirements for small postgres db

> Somewhere I did read pg needs strong hardware,

It doesn't. The default installation is optimised to run on very "weak"
hardware. You'll have trouble running e.g. LibreOffice in a useful way
on systems where PostgreSQL runs fine, especially if you use it on an
*operating* system (i.e. *not* Windows).

> (I read LibreOffice Base (at that point v3.4) was a
> very poor FE compared to the FE integrated into Access, and worse
> still crashes, corrupting your DB.

The corruption issues refer to the "embedded" version of HSQLDB which
comes with LO.

If used with a transaction-safe client-server RDBMS such as PostgreSQL,
LO can't really corrupt the DB.

> I also read all the Libre development concentrates on WP &
> Spreadsheet, not Base, which has hardly changed since Sun owned it if
> not before. But Base, having drivers for both pg & HSQLDB, is my
> fallback position for Forms GUI if nothing better around).

Unfortunately the only other FOSS database client application, Rekall,
has vanished years ago. And Kexi isn't really ready yet, e.g. it
doesn't even support composite keys. X-(

The lack of decent application development tools is imho the strongest
obstacle for "selling" PostgreSQL in companies.

Oracle, Sybase etc. all seem to have understood this - they give away
their development tools for free to lock developers, their applications
and customers buying those applications into their RDBMS.

> It is for the above reasons I am revisiting the suitability of pg.  As
> stated my DB App will be single user offline use, small, about 20
> tables, and many of those will be just short 'picklists' triggered by
> Form input for easier-validated dataentry.

LO is usable for CRUD, it's mostly the report writer that would need
some more development ressources. The latter is usable as well, it just
has some bugs.

> I notice the FAQ, User Manual, & neither of the 2 replies directly
> addresses my primary question: "If Atom class nettop not sufficient,
> would like to know the minimum class of CPU, RAM, GPU required."   Is
> it quite difficult to make even a rough recommendation of minimum
> hardware for the above 'small' db ?

To be honest, I've never managed to find a system that PostgreSQL
wouldn't run on.

The worst that I've ever had was a Windows2000 with 128MB or so, years
ago. Using a decently stripped-down Linux, I wouldn't be astonished if
even the latest PostgreSQL still ran on a system like that.

Sincerely,

Wolfgang