Book Image

PostgreSQL Server Programming

Book Image

PostgreSQL Server Programming

Overview of this book

Learn how to work with PostgreSQL as if you spent the last decade working on it. PostgreSQL is capable of providing you with all of the options that you have in your favourite development language and then extending that right on to the database server. With this knowledge in hand, you will be able to respond to the current demand for advanced PostgreSQL skills in a lucrative and booming market."PostgreSQL Server Programming" will show you that PostgreSQL is so much more than a database server. In fact, it could even be seen as an application development framework, with the added bonuses of transaction support, massive data storage, journaling, recovery and a host of other features that the PostgreSQL engine provides. This book will take you from learning the basic parts of a PostgreSQL function, then writing them in languages other than the built-in PL/PgSQL. You will see how to create libraries of useful code, group them into even more useful components, and distribute them to the community. You will see how to extract data from a multitude of foreign data sources, and then extend PostgreSQL to do it natively. And you can do all of this in a nifty debugging interface that will allow you to do it efficiently and with reliability.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
PostgreSQL Server Programming
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Cost of acquisition


One of biggest factors in deciding what technology is used in the application stack is the cost of acquisition. I've seen many application architectures drawn on a whiteboard where the technical team was embarrassed to show me, but they justified the design by trying to keep software licensing costs down. When it comes to the database environment, the usual suspects are Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. Oracle, the dominant player in the database space, is also the most costly. At the low end, Oracle does have reasonably priced offering and even a free express edition, but they are limited. Most people have needs beyond the low priced offerings and fall into the enterprise sales machine of Oracle. This usually results in a high price quote that makes your CFO fall out of his chair and you're back to designing your solution to keep your licensing costs down.

Then comes Microsoft SQL Server. This is your first reasonably viable option. The pricing is listed on the...