Re: What so special about PostgreSQL and other RDBMS?

Quirk (quirk_at_syntac.net) writes:
> [comp.databases.ms-sqlserver removed from Groups, not intersted in
> windows versus unix holy war]

It appears that you failed to do that. That is the newsgroup from where I read this thread. If you feel this group is not the venue for you, just don't reply at all.

And if you want to avoid holy wars, don't come with blanket statments about "terrible operating system" or barf just because people say "SQL Server".  

> Which would be a better product if it were not tied to a particular OS
> at the very least, and, if possible, not to a particular database
> either.

Only if you hold non-tiedness as a religious belief. Making a system portable over platforms, not the least RDBMSs, is very expensive, and I would suggest that our customers prefer to get more functionality out of the system.  

> try this:
>
> * create a wrapper around the execute binding, that way your
> application can at least execute stored procured on any backend that
> supports them.
>
> * use standard syntax as much as possible.
>
> * issolate the use of non standardized syntax in as few procedures as
> possible.
>
> How difficult is that?

Very.

And if you had any experience of developing an enterprise OLTP system you would know that.

>only extream performance concerns are generaly a good enough reason,

Rewriting an UPDATE statement which actually used standard syntax (correlated subquery in the SET clause), to one that use the proprietary FROM clause with a derived table, slashed execution time from two minutes to a few seconds.

And those cases are common place when you work with an RDBMS. Even if your standard SQL ports from one RDBMS to another (not all support the same subset of the standard), you cannot rely on that you performance does.

-- 
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, sommar_at_algonet.se

Books Online for SQL Server SP3 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/productdoc/2000/books.asp