Re: PGSQL or other DB?

On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 2:13 AM, Erik Jones <ejones@engineyard.com> wrote:
>
> On Jan 30, 2009, at 11:37 AM, durumdara wrote:

>>  - I can add/modify a table, or a field to a table without "full lock" on
>> the table (like DBISAM restructure). Like in FireBird, where the "add field"
>> change only the table description. I don't know that PG supports this way of
>> the DB modifying.
>
> Nope.  PostgreSQL is an all or nothing transactional database.  I'd never
> heard of DBISAM before you mentioned it and have never used Firebird.  After
> doing a little reading it turns out that if you plan to use transactions at
> all (which is very likely given even just the little you've described about
> the applications you're building) then you should realize that altering
> tables is not compatible with transactions and doing so will automatically
> commit any open transactions on the table.

Are talking about pgsql or some other database?  Everything in pgsql
can be done in a transaction, except create / drop database /
tablespace.

>  Looking into Firebird I couldn't
> find how it handles (or doesn't) that at all I but I did see that it will
> happily let you add a new not null column with no default to a table by
> writing nulls for the new attribute for any existing columns.  That already
> makes me queasy.

That's pretty much what pgsql does.  Why does it make you queasy?