Introduction
In this article, we learn about PostgreSQL and its features. Instead of an employee layoff, a company should think to migrate to open source technology, which can save huge costs. So, as a developer, we should take some initial steps to come up with an idea to migrate from a paid version technology to open source. The below article will give some strong points about PostgreSQL to convince management to migrate to PostgreSQL
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What is PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL, also known as Postgres (the reason to call as Postgres is in the History section below), is an open-source object-relational database management system. It supports extensibility and standard compliance. The best part of PostgreSQL is that it is cross-platform, i.e., we can run on Microsoft Windows, LINUX or Mac OS, etc.
Below are some key features:
- Object-Relational Database Management System (ORDBMS)
- Open-source
- Cross-platform
- LINUX
- Mac OS
- Microsoft Windows
In short, you can say PostgreSQL is the world's famous open source database
History of PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL evolved from the Ingres Project at Unversity of California, Berkeley. The team leader of the Ingres project was Michael Stonebraker. Michael left university in the year 1982 and rejoined in 1985. After he returned, he started working on Post-Ingres Project. Initially, it was called Post-Ingres, and eventually, it became Postgres. In 1988, first prototype of the product was built. In 1994, Ingres was based on Quel Query language, until this point in time, it was known as Postgres. In 1994, the Quel Query language interpreter was replaced by SQL Query language interpreter. At this point in time, a few developers thought it's not a good idea to call it Postgres, so they started to involve SQL with it. They renamed this particular product PostgreSQL in 1996 and in the year 1997, the industry has seen the very first PostgreSQL release.
As you can see, this product was called Postgres from 1985 to 1996 and later changed the name to PostgreSQL. So the official name of Postgres is PostgreSQL.
Features of PostgreSQL
If you are working on a data-oriented application, then it should be a robust and feature-rich database which can build our application quickly and securely. Below are some key features of PostgreSQL.
As follows:
- SQL: 2011 Standard where ACID principles are followed (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation & Durability)
- Indexes - Where it is implemented correctly to help improve the performance of queries
- Views, Triggers, Procedures, Functions- It also has these features
- Relationships - Support relationships using Foreign key constraints
- MulitVesion Concurrency Control (MVCC) - Use to handle data consistency when multiple processes are accessing the same data.
- Various different datatypes - PostgreSQL supports various different datatypes defined in SQL 2008 Standards like integer, numeric, boolean, char, varchar, date, interval & timestamp
- Support Native Programming Interface - For many popular languages like C/C++, Java, .Net, Python, etc.
PostgreSQL Capacity
If you think that since PostgreSQL is free then it doesn't have the capability to handle large databases, then your assumption will be wrong. Look at the below tables:
In this article, we have seen an overview of PostgreSQL and it's a feature. Try to implement the world's most famous open-source database to your application and get top ratings in your appraisal.
Enjoy learning and Happy coding!