Re: High-Profile Advocacy Opportunity: Vbulletin Forum Software

Oops! postgresql.org@donnacha.com ("Donnacha Mac Gloinn") was seen spray-painting on a wall:
> Vbulletin is a leading, high profile, forum software package and, IMHO,
> the most well thought-out.  It currently uses MySQL but alternatives are
> being discussed in both their very active official forum
> (http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/) and the main vb hacking forum
> (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/).
>
> A Postgresql edition of vbulletin would do a lot to raise awareness of
> Pgsql and highlight it's strengths.  I would like to suggest that the
> time is ripe to see if we can swing vbulletin into our camp.
>
> In a recent thread in the official vb forum
> (http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=97747&highlight=PostgreSQL),
> one Pgsql advocate sang its praises, in particular advanced indexing,
> and a vb developer, Scott MacVicar, responded "I love Postgresql too but
> they are missing a vital part that we've become dependant on..".  He
> then linked to the Pgsql ToDo list and indicated that the current lack
> of " Allow INSERT INTO tab (col1, ..) VALUES (val1, ..), (val2, ..)" was
> his bone of contention there.

This begs the question:

 - Are they using arbitrary INSERT statements of this sort?

 - Or could this be achieved by performing a stored procedure that
   might even be a better abstraction?

If the goal of the exercise is to do something like creating lines in
a message, then I'd suggest the thought of doing something like:

  select add_line(key, 'contents', 'some attribute'),
         add_line(key, 'more contents', 'some attribute'),
         add_line(key, 'still more contents', 'some attribute'),
         add_line(key, 'even contents', 'some attribute');

Frankly, I would find it surprising if this was a true "bottleneck"
against choosing PostgreSQL.

> Is there any way we could get the Pgsql devs to take another look at
> whatever missing features are stopping the vb team basing their
> application upon Pgsql?  The problem with the ToDo list is that,
> although it was updated just a couple of days ago, there is no
> indication or estimate of when those ToDos will be Done.

A valuable thing might also be to suggest workarounds...
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