Re: A free personal use dbms for windows/linux ?

On 29.05.2007 10:11 punit arya wrote:
I downloaded postgresql. the zipped installer was small enough & I
installed that on my windows xp partition. It's working fine. some of
my grudges:
the window in which we type & execute sql queries runs from dos. I
expected an independent window.

First: it does *not* run from "DOS". DOS is an ancient operating system and is no longer supported nor will any of the Postgres tools run "from dos". Those are full blown win32 (console) applications)

I expected an independent window
What do you mean with that? All DBMS have a basic commandline (console) SQL tool which can be used for batch processing and other tasks). In Firebird it is called isql.exe and in Postgres it is called psql.exe

If you are looking for a graphical administration tool try PGAdmin III (see http://www.postgresql.org/download/)


not enough documentation on installation & post installation
configuration. that was a lot of bother & tough too (it took me two
nights in a row to configure it satisfactorily).

Did you check out
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.2/static/index.html
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faqs.FAQ_windows.html
http://pgfoundry.org/projects/pginstaller

And then there is additional information here:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/techdocs

PS: I'm hooked to firebird v2. Its really nice & comes with adequate
documentation.
The documentation for Postgres is far superior to Firebird's. For Firebird you need to collect PDFs from various sources and there is no single document describing the current SQL syntax completely. If you try to find the syntax for something that you don't know when it was added, you first need to read the old Interbase docs, then the release notes for 1.0, then for 1.0.2, then for 1.0.3 then for 1.5, then for 1.5.1, then for 1.5.2, then for 1.5.3, thenfor 1.5.4 and the the release notes for 2.0. Not something I'd call "adequate". With postgres you have the complete description in one document for each release.

But I agree Firebird is a nice DBMS (if it wasn't for the documentation). I do find it strange though that you can only change user passwords with a commandline tool running on the server, you cannot change a user password from a client machine and only the first 8 character of a password are checked.

Thomas
.

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