Pervasive Software's Postgres 8 | Database Wars | April 14, 2005 | Network Computing

Pervasive Software's Postgres 8 | Database Wars | April 14, 2005 | Network Computing: "Pervasive Software's Postgres 8
Database Wars

Free of charge and enterprise-ready, this open-source database holds its own against Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle.

Apr 14, 2005 | By Jeremy Baumgartner


The latest enterprise-class database product from Pervasive Software, Pervasive Postgres 8, includes several updates that will make DB administrators happy. It's based on version 8.0.1 of the free, open-source PostgreSQL database, the primary competitor of the popular open-source MySQL database. As part of the community working to improve PostgreSQL, Pervasive Software sells support contracts for its commercial version of the PostgreSQL server.

A key new feature in Postgres 8 is the ability to run the database as a Windows service on a variety of Windows platforms, including Windows 2000 Professional and Server, 2003 Standard and Enterprise, and XP Professional. The product is also compatible with SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9, SuSE Professional 9.1 and 9.2, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, and Fedora Core 2 and 3. Enterprises will enjoy support for tablespaces and server-side languages, better table-alteration support, and point-in-time recovery.

I tested Postgres 8 using Fedora Core 3 on a 1-GHz Pentium 3 system in our Madison, Wis., Real-World Labs®. Installation was a breeze, thanks to a simple, Java-based install wizard and packaged binaries. A Java run-time environment was provided, so there were no prerequisites to worry about."