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From: Sean Davis <sdavis2@mail.nih.gov>
Subject: Re: postgresql 8.0 advantages
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 09:53:09 -0500
To: schen@graciousstyle.com


On Feb 25, 2005, at 9:41 AM, Si Chen wrote:

> Hello.
>
> I read the PostgreSQL 8.0 "What's New" page 
> (http://www.postgresql.org/docs/whatsnew) and wasn't sure whether 
> version 8.0 is significantly faster, more scalability, or more stable 
> than versions 7.4?  I remember big speed improvements between 7.3 and 
> 7.4.  It seems the biggest advantage of version 8.0 is being able to 
> run in Windows.
> Is that true?

I like programming in perl and the new pl/perl adds a totally new 
dimension to databasing.  For example, the dbi-link 
(http://pgfoundry.org/projects/dbi-link/) project allows you to create 
a schema within your database that mirrors another data source (any 
data sources available via perl DBI).  You could have an XML file 
served from the web as a set of tables in one schema, a mysql database 
as a second schema, and a set of csv files in a directory as a third 
schema, all with views within Postgres that allow query, update, 
delete, etc.  Other projects such as this are likely to spring up, I 
would imagine.  Performance characteristics aside (which I will leave 
to others to comment about), I have found the pl/perl improvements well 
worth the switch.

Sean