Re: [DOCS] Better Features document? - Mailing list pgsql-general

Sounds great.

I have collected some comments from people about PostgreSQL vs. other
databases at:

    ftp://candle.pha.pa.us/pub/postgresql/comparison.mbox

This may help.  You can also link to the docs and my book at:

    http://www.postgresql.org/docs/awbook.html

to give people more detailed information about the features.  I think
such a page would be a great idea.  I can help too.

>
> One thing that confused me when I started seriously looking at PostgreSQL
> was the features it had relative to other competitors. We have so many
> powerful features that are often underused by new users:
>
>   * procedural languages
>   * triggers
>   * rules
>   * views
>   * custom aggregate functions
>   * ... and more
>
> and so on. The documentation does a good job (& gets better all the
> time!) at explaining this, but many users never read that far into the
> documentation, and, of course, many people never get to the documentation
> at all -- they're evaluating software by a 10-minute glance through the
> web site.
>
> We have a features document at
>
>    http://www.postgresql.org/features.html
>
> but this covers the architecture of the system (postgres / postmaster,
> etc), and very little about some of our other competitive advantages.
>
> My fear is that users & potential users come to PG w/o learning what a
> view is, how triggers can be helpful in designing database systems, why
> custom aggregates are so great, etc. (Those of us w/CS backgrounds do well
> to remember how many web database designers don't have that background!)
>
> Therefore, people compare us sometimes w/other database systems (mostly
> MySQL simply as 'MySQL seems faster and easier to install, but PostgreSQL
> has some features, like transactions, that may be useful to complicated
> databases', completely missing how many PG features are important to
> everyone that is designing databases, simple or large.
>
> I started writing a 'Features+' document a few months ago, but it got sat
> aside during a busy work time. I'd like to restart that work.
>
> I don't want to recreate the manuals -- I envision something like a 5-page
> 'product datasheet' that explains just enough about what a trigger is so
> that users have no excuse for not digging into that chapter, and that
> people understand how fantasic procedural languages are.
>
> Before I start digging into that, does anyone know if there
> exists a short- or medium- length (2-5 p) document that explains, for
> ordinary database mortals, about the sophisticated features of PG?
>
> Does anyone want to help put this together?
>
>
> --
> Joel Burton   <jburton@scw.org>
> Director of Information Systems, Support Center of Washington
>
>
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