agora inbox for postgres@postgres.berkeley.edu
help / color / mirror / Atom feedFrom: Chris Bitmead <chrisb@cssc-syd.tansu.com.au>
To: D.A.Nelson@newcastle.ac.uk
Cc: postgres@postgres.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: Re: FAQ
Date: Thu, 19 May 1994 09:54:04 +1000
Message-ID: <199405182354.JAA15592@picasso.cssc-syd.tansu.com.au> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <AA25931.9405180926@swinhoe.ncl.ac.uk>
Following is a Postgres FAQ although it is a little old.
Frequently Asked Questions about POSTGRES
Q. What Is POSTGRES?
A. POSTGRES was a database research project directed by Prof. Michael
Stonebraker at U. C. Berkeley. To facilitate research efforts, a
software test-bed was created; this is the "POSTGRES" DBMS
software. The POSTGRES DBMS is extended relational or object
oriented, depending on the buzzword du jour.
The major purpose of this software is to provide a platform and a
basis for the testing of implementations of new ideas in database
research. Several graduate students, staff members, as well as
undergraduate programmers have contributed to the implementation
of the POSTGRES software. After this paragraph, all references to
"POSTGRES" refer to the software itself.
As of this writing, POSTGRES is no longer an official research
effort at U.C. Berkeley.
POSTGRES is:
o Relational. One of the major goals of POSTGRES was to show
that an essentially relational DBMS can be extended to handle
complex objects, rules, and be highly extensible.
o Highly extensible. POSTGRES allows user-defined operators,
types, functions and access methods.
o While POSTGRES is relational, object-oriented ideas have been
implemented in POSTGRES (inheritance, etc).
POSTGRES also has many other features, such as query language
procedures, rules, triggers, etc., which are beyond the scope of
this discussion.
For more info on the POSTGRES research itself, you should get the
POSTGRES technical documentation described below.
Q. What is the connection between POSTGRES and University Ingres?
A. There is none, aside from Prof. Stonebraker. There is no
compatibility between the two software packages, and the research
projects had differing objectives. We do not support University
Ingres at all. Questions about it should be sent to the USENET
newsgroup "comp.databases" or "comp.databases.ingres". You can
also, in a pinch, try the mailing list:
ingres-mail@idiom.berkeley.ca.us
Q. How do I get the POSTGRES software package?
A. In one of two ways:
1. Via anonymous FTP from the host s2k-ftp.CS.Berkeley.EDU
(IP address as of this writing: 128.32.149.157)
The directory that contains the relevant files is:
pub/postgres/postgres-v4r2
(Note: transmit .Z files in BINARY mode.)
2. If you don't have Internet access, you can get POSTGRES by sending a
check for US$150 payable to
Regents of the University of California
This should be addressed to
The POSTGRES Project
557 Evans Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720
Indicate in your accompanying letter whether you want the
system on a 9-track tape at 1600 BPI or 6250 BPI, a QIC 24
cartridge tape, a DEC TK50 cartridge tape, a 4mm DAT tape, or
an Exabyte 2GB 8mm tape.
We do not distribute POSTGRES in any other format (such as
FTPmail). However, you can also get POSTGRES on a variety of
"freeware" CDROMs (such as those from PrimeTime Freeware or
Yggdrasil Computing). We have nothing to do with the distributors
of these CDROMs, and if you are interested in obtaining POSTGRES
this way you should contact your local computer bookstore. Do
note that, if you can get them, they will cost much less than
US$150.
Q. What is the POSTGRES query language?
A. PostQUEL, which is an incompatible, extended version of QUEL (the
Ingres query language).
Q. What about SQL support?
A. POSTGRES does not support SQL. A commercial version of POSTGRES
produced by Montage Software, Inc. (see below) does support SQL.
Q. What does POSTGRES run on?
A. POSTGRES 4.2 is known to run on Sun-4 (SPARC) computers running SunOS
4.1.2 or higher, DECstation 3100 and 5000 (MIPS) computers running
Ultrix 4.2 or higher, H-P 9000 Model 700 and 800 (PA-RISC)
computers running HP-UX 9.00 or higher, DECstation 3000 (Alpha
AXP) running OSF/1 1.3, and IBM RS/6000 (POWER) running AIX 3.2.3
or higher.
The experience of outside developers indicates that POSTGRES is
relatively easy to port to any system that supports:
1. Berkeley-style sockets
2. System V shared memory and semaphores
3. A K&R-compatible C compiler
4. Other "normal" Unix system calls
For example, versions of POSTGRES have been ported to Windows NT.
Some header file problems may be encountered; these are easily
fixed by a programmer knowledgable with the local OS.
Q. How do I get papers about POSTGRES?
A. The documents and manpages are available directly in the POSTGRES
source. At the top level there are pre-formatted manual pages and
a reference manual. There are a number of other documents in the
src/doc directory and there is a directory in there that has
pre-formatted postscript files. You can order hard-copies of
technical reports individually. For more details, send e-mail or
call Michelle Mattera at (510) 642-3417; her e-mail address is
michelle@postgres.berkeley.edu
Q. What is the status of the POSTGRES implementation?
A. It is not up to commercial levels of reliability. I would not want
_my_ payroll records in it :-) However, it is quite adequate for
managing scientific and experimental datasets and as an
instructional system. Its speed on applications which stress
transaction processing is not particularly good, but it is within
about 50% of commercial systems on the more "report-oriented"
Wisconsin benchmark, and is twice as fast as University Ingres on
the Wisconsin.
Q. Does POSTGRES have a user interface? A report generator? An
embedded query language interface?
A. No, no and no. On the other hand, "pgbrowse," a powerful and
extensible graphical user interface based on Tcl/TK, is available
from crseo.ucsb.edu (128.111.100.50) in pub/pgbrowse.
Q. What about a C-callable interface for writing applications?
A. There most definitely is one, called libpq. There is also an
interface for referencing POSTGRES data from shell and perl
scripts. See the POSTGRES Reference Manual for details.
Q. Is there a discussion group about POSTGRES?
A. Yes - the mailing list
postgres@postgres.berkeley.edu
has (as of this writing) over six hundred readers and gateways; you
can subscribe to the mailing list by sending mail to
postgres-request@postgres.berkeley.edu
with "ADD" as the Subject.
You UNsubscribe from the mailing list by sending mail to
postgres-request@postgres.berkeley.edu
with "DEL" as the Subject.
Q. How do I make a bug report?
A. If you find a bug, send a description of your database schema,
queries, and a stack dump (type "where" in DBX) if possible to
bug-postgres@postgres.berkeley.edu
Q. How do I find out about known bugs?
A. The known bug list for version 4.2 does not exist yet, but will be
placed in the file
pub/postgres/postgres-v4r2/postgres.bugs
as soon as we start getting feedback on the release.
Q. Please summarize the important files on s2k-ftp.cs.berkeley.edu.
A. Please see pub/postgres/postgres-v4r2/README.
Q. Please summarize the important POSTGRES mailing aliases.
A. Mailing Address Purpose
postgres@postgres POSTGRES general discussion and
announcements
postgres-request@postgres Administrative requests (ADD/DEL)
bug-postgres@postgres POSTGRES bug reports
postgres-questions@postgres Questions to the developers of POSTGRES
(see response to the next question)
Q. Please summarize the main contacts at the POSTGRES group.
A. Unfortunately, POSTGRES is no longer an active research project at
U.C. Berkeley, so there is no longer a POSTGRES group. Some of the
developers will probably be staying in touch on the previously
mentioned mailing lists, so that is your best bet.
Q. Is there a commercial version of POSTGRES?
A. Yes. Montage Software, Inc. has performed a substantial amount of
bullet-proofing and performance improvement and has added many new
features (true log-based crash recovery, an type system that makes
sense, SQL support). They also provide technical support. You can
contact them at:
Montage Software, Inc.
1111 Broadway, Suite 2000
Oakland, CA 94607
510-652-8000
510-652-8050 (fax)
sales@montage.com
==============================================================================
To add/remove yourself to/from the POSTGRES mailing list: send mail with
the subject line ADD or DEL to "postgres-request@postgres.Berkeley.EDU"
If this fails, send mail to "post_questions@postgres.Berkeley.EDU" and
a human will deal with it. DO NOT post to the "postgres" mailing list.
==============================================================================
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To: postgres@postgres.berkeley.edu
Cc: chrisb@cssc-syd.tansu.com.au, D.A.Nelson@newcastle.ac.uk
Subject: Re: FAQ
In-Reply-To: <199405182354.JAA15592@picasso.cssc-syd.tansu.com.au>
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