[development] So why we do support postgresql?

[Stefan Nagtegaal]

I'm sorry to chime in on this topic which absolutely abracadabra for  
me. I have absolutely no sense about databases at all, but a consenses  
could be to:
- make drupal 6 pgSQL and MySQL compatible and release the bastard;
- at the same day we make a poll on drupal.org asking people what  
database type they use, and open up comments for those that choose  
pgSQL to tell us, why they do;

That way we know:
- how much people are actually using pgSQL;
- and why they do it;

Just some thought of someone who doesn't know anything about the  
differences between MySQL and pgSQL. I personally never used the  
latter...


Stefan


Op 16 jan 2008, om 18:05 heeft Konstantin Käfer het volgende geschreven:

> Hi,
>
> Please note that with my mail, I did not imply that we should go  
> with the option "rip out postgres support". It as merely one of the  
> ways I can see, because we can certainly afford to keep the status  
> quo. I am actually more interested in the second approach. Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-relational_mapping 
>  as an introduction.http://propel.phpdb.org/trac/ is a nice ORM  
> framework for this.
>
> In case we don't want to go with a full blown ORM system, propel's  
> underlying DBAL is also worth a shot:http://creole.phpdb.org/trac/  
> I'm not saying that we should ship with Creole (even though I don't  
> think that's necessarily a bad thing), but that we can look at how  
> others solved this issue.
>
> Konstantin Käfer -- http://kkaefer.com/
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------
> Don't miss DrupalCON Boston 2008 · March 3-6, 2008
> Learn more at http://boston2008.drupalcon.org
> Affordable sponsorship packages available
> ------------------------------------------------------
>
> On 15.01.2008, at 20:14, Konstantin Käfer wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am with Károly on this one. PostgreSQL support is certainly a  
>> nice to have feature, but since there is noone seriously using it  
>> (NowPublic used PostgreSQL a couple of months ago but eventually  
>> switched to MySQL), supporting it is more a hinderance than an  
>> actual benefit for Drupal.
>>
>> Fact is that MySQL is by far the most used DBMS used with Drupal.  
>> That has two reasons: MySQL is installed on most hosts and most  
>> people in the PHP hosting business are familiar with setting up,  
>> configuring and tuning MySQL.
>>
>> The second reason is that most contrib modules don't properly  
>> support Postgres, and only few people are running a Drupal site  
>> without several contrib modules. So, what buys us supporting  
>> Postgres in core if you can't actually use it because critical  
>> contrib modules don't support it properly? You guessed it. Let's  
>> not get into the illusion that module maintainers will eventually  
>> add Postgres support; most of them don't even have Postgres  
>> installed and I bet most are not willing to learn yet another DBMS'  
>> innards to circumnavigate all the cliffs associated with that task.
>>
>> IMO, there are two ways we could go:
>>
>> - Rip out Postgres support (but let's not drop the DBAL; we need it  
>> for mysql vs. mysqli and it's not really a speed issue)
>> - Completely abstract access to the database so that module authors  
>> don't have to write actual SQL code
>>
>>
>> Konstantin Käfer -- http://kkaefer.com/
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------
>> Don't miss DrupalCON Boston 2008 · March 3-6, 2008
>> Learn more at http://boston2008.drupalcon.org
>> Affordable sponsorship packages available
>> ------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On 15.01.2008, at 19:22, Karoly Negyesi wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Still there are no testers. I want to reiterate my plea: make
>>> postgresql support somewhat optional. If there are testers, great,  
>>> if
>>> not, go on with life. You can flame me, but this is already the  
>>> state
>>> of affairs just noone wants to admit. Just see
>>> http://groups.drupal.org/node/6980 . Greg spoonfeeds you. I know we
>>> will get testers for the rest of the week because of this letter and
>>> then they will move away as it happened uncounted times.
>>>
>>> I wonder what people will say. "Monoculture is bad" -- tick, do not
>>> bother with this answer. "You are evil" -- tick, do not bother  
>>> either.
>>> "There are testers, but" -- surely there are just they have hidden
>>> themselves really well. What about answering something  
>>> constructive? I
>>> *am* bored by needing this raised every month.
>>>
>>> Regards
>>>
>>> Karoly Negyesi
>>
>