Thank you. I objected to having the jdbc code moved out of the base product cvs tree for some of the reasons being discussed in this thread: how are people going to find the jdbc driver, how will they get documentation for it, etc.
I think the core problem is that some people view postgres as just the database server proper. But most people (IMHO) view postgres (or any database) as a set of things (core server, admin utils, drivers, etc).
I think the solution lies in improving www.postgresql.org. At the end of the day it doesn't matter where source code lives, what matters is can people find what they are expecting. Given we know what people are looking for, that should be front and center on the web site and the ftp sites.
--Barry
Kris Jurka wrote:
On Wed, 21 Apr 2004, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
On Wed, 21 Apr 2004, Rod Taylor wrote:
We have the current issue of people not knowing that projects like pgadmin exist or where to find the jdbc drivers.
Now, out of all of the PostgreSQL users, what % are using JDBC? What % are using ODBC? What percentage of those using JDBC are also using ODBC? What % of those using PgAdmin are also using ODBC? For that matter, how many ppl using JDBC only want to download the .jar file itself, and not the source code? % of Binary-Only PgAdmin users? ODBC driver?
See the poll run on postgresql.org: http://www.postgresql.org/survey.php?View=1&SurveyID=24
It took several minutes to load for me so I'll include the results here: Currently the results of our "What PostgreSQL API do you use the most?" survey are:
Answer Responses Percentage libpq 1752 13.116% libpq++ 526 3.938% libpqxx 176 1.318% psqlODBC 2495 18.678% JDBC 7607 56.947% Npgsql 294 2.201% ECPG 154 1.153% pgtcl 354 2.650% Total number of responses: 13358
You can certainly fault the choices (leaving perl, python, and php off the list), but 7500 java users is something that can't be ignored.
The point is that any legitimate database will provide JDBC and ODBC
drivers. When new users can't immediately find them from the postgresql
home page they get frustrated and badmouth postgresql. Telling them to go
to gborg isn't really helpful. gborg is currently full of dead projects,
projects that have never had any code committed, and projects that are of
questionable utility. gborg is supposed to be the dumping ground for these ala sourceforge, so it's not the dead projects I object to, so much as the fact that serious and critical projects are grouped together with them.
We need better packaging/promotion of secondary projects and the main
project can't be ignorant of this fact and cop out with "we just provide the server."
Kris Jurka
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