Re: Giving up trying to use Oracle for object oriented data management

Pearl and Java support is included also with PostgresSql.

"> Having used Oracle since the the late days of V6. I have found myself at
> odds with Oracle's direction and price and the core product saddled with
> more features than I use or need. The memory use has grown dramatically
 from
> 8.0.x 8.1.7 for like configurations. It appears more and more that Oracle
> today is a company driven by marketeers than engineers - built to meet
> the latest IT yuppy buzzword or that which is in vogue than to strive for
> technical excellence or cutting edge academically based technology
> inovation.
>
> While MySql has offered me with a viable alternative to pricey Oracle for
> most applications, I was absolutely blown away by PostgresSQL. It is by
 far
> the best answer I found for a possible object oriented alternative to
> Oracle. It makes data relationship management much easier than using
> multiple detail tables.
>
> http://www.postgresql.org (Main site)
> http://www.postgresql.org/idocs/index.php?postgres.html(docs)
>
> Other than the rich object oriented / user extensible type support and
> object inheritance postgresSqL has a number of other
>
> features:
>
> 1. PHP and C/C++ /ODBC support. (do you really want to waste your time
 with
> PRO*C?)
> 2. "Free" (GPLed) (Do your really want to waste money for additional
> Oracle licenses for tier-2 and tier-3 projects?)
> 3. received the 2000 Linux Journal Editor's Choice Award for Best
 Database!
> 4. received the 'LinuxWorld Editors Choice Award' for The Best Database
> Management System!
> 5. use of regular expressions in query.
> 6. Sql constructs for access to object oriented data is not convoluted.
> 7. Many Datatypes including ...
>
> Numeric Types
> Monetary Type
> Character Types
> Date/Time Types
> Date/Time Input
> Date/Time Output
> Time Zones
> Internals
> Boolean Type
> Geometric Types
> Point
> Line Segment
> Box
> Path
> Polygon
> Circle
> Network Address Data Types
> inet
> cidr
> macaddr
> Bit String Types
>
>
> 8. Network addres functions
>
> Operator Description Usage
> < Less than inet '192.168.1.5' < inet '192.168.1.6'
> <= Less than or equal inet '192.168.1.5' <= inet '192.168.1.5'
> = Equals inet '192.168.1.5' = inet '192.168.1.5'
> >= Greater or equal inet '192.168.1.5' >= inet '192.168.1.5'
> > Greater inet '192.168.1.5' > inet '192.168.1.4'
> <> Not equal inet '192.168.1.5' <> inet '192.168.1.4'
> << is contained within inet '192.168.1.5' << inet '192.168.1/24'
> <<= is contained within or equals inet '192.168.1/24' <<= inet
> '192.168.1/24'
> >> contains inet'192.168.1/24' >> inet '192.168.1.5'
> >>= contains or equals inet '192.168.1/24' >>= inet '192.168.1/24'
>
> All of the operators for inet can be applied to cidr values as well. The
> operators <<, <<=, >>, >>= test for subnet inclusion: they
>
> consider only the network parts of the two addresses, ignoring any host
> part, and determine whether one network part is
>
> identical to or a subnet of the other.
>
> broadcast(inet) inet broadcast address for network
> broadcast('192.168.1.5/24') 192.168.1.255/24
> host(inet) text extract IP address as text host('192.168.1.5/24')
> 192.168.1.5
> masklen(inet) integer extract netmask length masklen('192.168.1.5/24') 24
> netmask(inet) inet construct netmask for network netmask('192.168.1.5/24')
> 255.255.255.0
> network(inet) cidr extract network part of address
 network('192.168.1.5/24')
> 192.168.1.0/24
> text(inet) text extract IP address and masklen as text text(inet
> '192.168.1.5') 192.168.1.5/32
> abbrev(inet) text extract abbreviated display as text abbrev(cidr
> '10.1.0.0/16') 10.1/16
>
> All of the functions for inet can be applied to cidr values as well. The
> host(), text(), and abbrev() functions are
>
>
> Interview ..
> http://lwn.net/2001/features/Momjian/ (Linux Weekly News interviewed
 Bruce
> Momjian)
>
> Books:
>
> PostgreSQL: Introduction and Concepts
> by Bruce Momjian
>

 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201703319/o/qid=992831565/sr=2-1/ref
> =aps_sr_b_1_1/002-8804306-9429613
>
> PostgreSQL
> by Jeff Perkins
>

 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0761524444/o/qid=992831565/sr=2-2/ref
> =aps_sr_b_1_2/002-8804306-9429613
>
> Postgresql Programmer's Guide
> by Thomas Lockhart (Editor)
>

 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0595149170/o/qid=992831565/sr=2-3/ref
> =aps_sr_b_1_3/002-8804306-9429613
>
>
> http://www.postgresql.org (Main site)
>
>
> Postgres allows columns of a table to be defined as variable-length
> multi-dimensional arrays. Arrays of any built-in type or user-defined type
> can be created. To illustrate their use, we create this table:
>
> CREATE TABLE sal_emp (
> name text,
> pay_by_quarter integer[],
> schedule text[][]
> );
>
> The above query will create a table named sal_emp with a text string
 (name),
> a one-dimensional array of type integer (pay_by_quarter), which shall
> represent the employee's salary by quarter, and a two-dimensional array of
> text (schedule), which represents the employee's weekly schedule.
>
>
> Now we do some INSERTs; note that when appending to an array, we enclose
 the
> values within braces and separate them by commas. If you know C, this is
> not unlike the syntax for initializing structures.
>
> INSERT INTO sal_emp
> VALUES ('Bill',
> '{10000, 10000, 10000, 10000}',
> '{{"meeting", "lunch"}, {}}');
> INSERT INTO sal_emp
> VALUES ('Carol',
> '{20000, 25000, 25000, 25000}',
> '{{"talk", "consult"}, {"meeting"}}');
>
> Now, we can run some queries on sal_emp. First, we show how to access a
> single element of an array at a time. This query retrieves the names of
 the
> employees whose pay changed in the second quarter:
>
> SELECT name FROM sal_emp WHERE pay_by_quarter[1] <> pay_by_quarter[2];
> name
> -------
> Carol
> (1 row)
> Postgres uses the "one-based" numbering convention for arrays, that is, an
 

> array of n elements starts with array[1] and ends with array[n].
>
>
> This query retrieves the third quarter pay of all employees:
>
> SELECT pay_by_quarter[3] FROM sal_emp;
>
> pay_by_quarter
> ----------------
> 10000
> 25000
> (2 rows)
>
> To search for a value in an array, you must check each value of the array.
> This can be done by hand (if you know the size of the array):
>
> SELECT * FROM sal_emp WHERE pay_by_quarter[1] = 10000 OR
> pay_by_quarter[2] = 10000 OR
> pay_by_quarter[3] = 10000 OR
> pay_by_quarter[4] = 10000;
> However, this quickly becomes tedious for large arrays, and is not helpful
> if the size of the array is unknown. Although it is not part of the
 primary
> PostgreSQL distribution, in the contributions directory, there is an
> extension to PostgreSQL that defines new functions and operators for
> iterating over array values. Using this, the above query could be:
> SELECT * FROM sal_emp WHERE pay_by_quarter[1:4] *= 10000;
>
> To search the entire array (not just specified columns), you could use:
> SELECT * FROM sal_emp WHERE pay_by_quarter *= 10000;
>
>
Received on Mon Jun 18 2001 - 00:45:42 CDT