PostgreSQL

What is PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL (sometimes known just as Postgres) is an open source Relational Database (RDBMS). At the time of writing, the latest version of PostgreSQL is 7.4

It provides similar functionality to commercial databases such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, IBM DB/2 and so forth.

Limitations

PostgreSQL does not provide finely grained security permissions

PostgreSQL is not easy to install

PostgreSQL is not suitable for the Windows 2000 platform

PostgreSQL does not support updates to views

PostgreSQL does not support real time replication

PostgreSQL does not support two phase commits

Alternatives

Most commercial databases provide the features that are currently lacking in PostgreSQL at a price. While PostgreSQL may not be suitable for you if you have demanding availability requirements, we believe that it is suitable to most business uses that permit some weekly downtime.

The Firebird database seems to provide some of the missing features of PostgreSQL but lacks the wide user base that is driving the rapid advancement of PostgreSQL. We have not yet fully evaluated Firebird, but you may wish to investigate the features that it offers if PostgreSQL does not yet meet your needs

We do not recommend or support MySQL. Although this provides good performance and a relatively user friendly installation experience, its data integrity features are immature. Specifically it does not yet support foreign keys, or views, and transaction support is not enabled on tables by default (nor can it be mixed with operations on tables lacking support).

More information on PostgreSQL

The latest version of PostgreSQL at the time of writing is 7.4

The development of Postgres is coordinated from the http://www.postgresql.org website. The latest versions can be downloaded from one of the mirror sites listed at http://www.postgresql.org/mirrors-ftp.html