Re: Fwd: Re: enabling postgresql by default

Josh Berkus wrote:
>>If they want to level the playing field and not include anything I am
>>fine with that, and I think we all could support that, but unless you
>>think it is detrimental to postgresql for them to include static pgsql
>>libs in php (which I do not) it seems we should lobby for them to put in
>>postgresql libs over anything else.
>
>
> mmmm ... one problem:  No PostgreSQL for Windows, yet.
>
> A lot of PHP developers work on Windows ....
>

A few points:

1) WRT MySQL and Postgres, we're talking about the client library. The
Postgres client library (libpq) does compile on Windows already (and has
for several releases at least).

2) The MySQL client library source code has been bundled in-total in PHP
for a while now, which made enabling it by default practical. For them
to do the same with Postgres, someone has to do the work to lift the
client library code out of the Postgres source tree, and integrate it
into the PHP source tree (assuming of course that the PHP group would
allow it).

3) WRT sqlite, it is already bundled into PHP's source tree -- the
entire thing, not just a client. In other words, enabling sqlite by
default gives them a SQL interface to flat files, with no other
dependencies (compared to MySQL and Postgres where you need the server
installed somewhere for the client to be worth anything to you). This is
useful in hosted environments where a database is either not offered or
is offered at additional cost.

My conclusions are:
- By not enabling MySQL by default, the playing field *is* being leveled
- Integrating sqlite in PHP makes a lot of sense from the standpoint of
   the PHP group, and doesn't offer any real competition to either MySQL
   or PostgreSQL. If anything it lowers the bar for new people to learn
   SQL, and eventually those same people will migrate up.

Joe