Postgres OnLine Journal - informix

Database Administration, Reporting, and Light application development

nospam@example.com (Leo Hsu and Regina Obe) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 01:54:00 -0400

One of the most common questions people ask is Which tools work with PostgreSQL. In a sense the measure of a database's maturity/popularity are the number of vendors willing to produce management and development tools for it. Luckily there are a lot of vendors producing tools for PostgreSQL and the list is growing. One set of tools people are interested in are Database administration, ER diagramming, Query tools, and quickie application generators (RAD).

For this issue of our product showcase, we will not talk about one product, but several that fit in the aforementioned category. All the listed products work with PostgreSQL and can be used for database administration and/or architecting or provide some sort of light reporting/rapid application building suite. By light reporting/application building, we mean a tool with a simple wizard that a novice can use to build somewhat functional applications in minutes or days. This rules out all-purpose development things like raw PHP, .NET, Visual Studio, database drivers etc. Things we consider in this realm are things like OpenOffice Base and MS Access. Most of these tools are either free or have 30-day try before you buy options.

You can't really say one tool is absolutely better than another since each has its own strengths and caters to slightly different audiences and also you may like the way one tool does one important thing really well, though it may be mediocre in other respects. We also left out a lot of products we are not familiar with and may have gotten some things wrong.

If we left out your favorite product and you feel it meets these criteria, or you feel we made any errors, please let us know, and we'll add or correct it. We will be including Free open source as well as proprietary products in this mix. If we left out what you consider an important criteria, please let us know and we'll try to squeeze it in somewhere.

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GDAL OGR2OGR for Data Loading

nospam@example.com (Leo Hsu and Regina Obe) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:42:00 -0500

What is FWTools and OGR GDAL?

FWTools GIS Toolkit is a freely available open source toolkit for Windows and Linux that can do more than GIS tricks. It is a precompiled bundle of Open Source GIS tools. The FW comes from the initials of Frank Warmerdam, the originator of the toolkit and current President of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGEO).

One key component of the GIS Toolkit is the GDAL/OGR library. Parts of the library have been enhanced by several in the OSGEO community. GDAL is a basic foundation of countless Open source GIS as well as commercial GIS applications. Here are Listings of commercial and open source software that use it and GDAL sponsors.

This is a library which historically has been developed and maintained by Frank Warmerdam, but has started to garner quite a few developers. GDAL is X/MIT licensed (similar to BSD license), therefore the licensing is very generous for commercial use. The toolkit can be downloaded from http://fwtools.maptools.org/

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PostgreSQL The Road Behind and Ahead

nospam@example.com (Leo Hsu and Regina Obe) — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 03:10:21 -0500

Welcome to PostgreSQL OnLine Journal.

PostgreSQL is an extremely rich object relational database system and has a regal lineage that dates back almost to the beginning of the existence of relational databases.

If we were to look at the family tree of PostgreSQL it would look something like this

(Ingres, System-R) 
          Postgres
              Illustra
                 Informix
                     IBM Informix
              Postgres95
                 PostgreSQL

In fact PostgreSQL is a cousin of the databases Sybase and Microsoft SQL Server because the people that started Sybase came from UC Berkeley and worked on the Ingres and/or Postgres projects with Michael Stonebraker. Later on the source code of Sybase SQL Server was later licensed to Microsoft to produce Microsoft SQL Server.

Here is an interesting diagram done by Oleg Bartunov that shows the various relational database pedigrees.

The main focus of this journal is to educate users and potential users about the numerous capabilities and uses of this powerful database management system.

Over the years we have watched PostgreSQL grow and reach a wider audience. Each day brings newer features, more stability, more environments supported and more Off-the-Shelf (OTS) applications that support this DBMS.

This Journal is a bit of a literary experiment for us. Technology is very fast-paced and we find that most of the new information we ingest these days comes via fast-paced sources such as Blogs and Magazine/Periodical channels. I like the free form of the blog structure and ability to comment, but I also appreciate the more disciplined, carefully categorized, walk away with a booklet format of the Periodical. Our hope is to combine these two literary instruments into a blogo-periodical that has 2 faces:

the face of a blog
the face of an online magazine

Since this is what we call a blogo-periodical rather than a plain blog, we shall continually make edits to prior entries that are within the span of our editing issue in progress. So you may find if you are viewing it as a blog, that entries you have already read suddenly change.

After we complete each issue, we hope to provide each journal issue as a downloadable PDF magazine/periodical. Issues in progress or completed will always be available as html ebooks.

In each issue of this journal, we hope to cover the following areas

Editor's Note - We will provide general comments we would like.
What's New and Upcoming In PostgreSQL - Will outline items targeted for next release as well as new features in current release.
PostgreSQL Q&A - Common questions and answers we have curled from newsgroups as well as user submitted questions
Basics - Articles that pose a basic problem or explain something
PL Programming - Using PL languages in PostgreSQL - e.g. Plpgsql, PLR, PlPython, PLPHP, PLPerl, PLPerlU, PLProxy etc.
PostgreSQL Contribs Spotlight - Using PostgreSQL contribs or advanced features - e.g. PostGIS, PgCrypto, PgSphere, TSearch etc.
Application Development - Using PostgreSQL in an Application e.g. with PHP, Python, Perl, Java, Ruby, .NET, MS Access, OpenOffice etc.
Product Showcase - a commercial or opensource product for managing PostgreSQL databases or that supports PostgreSQL as a backend