Hi there,

I hope this hasn't been covered in FAQ's; I couldn't find it specifically 
mentioned.   So we'd like to build a single-user application that uses 
PostgreSQL as a database back end because of so many of the unique things that 
it offers:  customizable index formats (GIST - it's going to be a pattern 
matching database that requires some clever indexing tricks), customizable data 
types, full text search, temp tables, and importantly: its license model.   
MySQL or Firebird don't do what we need.  It'll run on Mac & Windows.    I'm 
wondering if anyone's consolidated documentation of all the little pieces 
needed to get PostgreSQL to play nicely next to an app like this?

Most of the FAQ's in this vein state something like "PostgreSQL isn't an 
embedded server..."  But we specifically don't want an embedded server in our 
process, even if it were possible, since it would increase the potential for 
database corruption, increase our process' memory footprint, etc. 

Mainly we want our app's installer to manage the installation of postgresql, 
the app's process to nicely start and stop the postgres server with our 
application (would be nice to do so via library calls rather than having to 
shell out to other commands), only enable local connections, not interfere with 
other postgres versions installed on the system, minimize the presence of 
config files for users to mess with, make sure the data store is easily 
removable by the user, and other things that will make the user blissfully 
unaware of its presence.  Many of these things are clearly documented (I've 
found those already), but some are a bit more hidden.  And I'm sure there's 
quite a few that I haven't thought of yet that we'll encounter once we start 
testing on different systems - those are the ones that I'm worried about.

Anyway, has anyone documented these types of things in a single place?  If it 
hasn't been done yet, we'll be taking our own notes as we progress and would be 
happy to post those somewhere (like perhaps the proposed postgresql cookbook 
wiki), if others would find this useful.

Cheers,
Paul

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