Re: [GENERAL] MySQL versus Postgres

[John Gage]

In my fondest moments, I consider myself a nerd, and when I do I think  
I am completely cool.


On Aug 6, 2010, at 9:38 PM, zach cruise wrote:


john, you're running up against a culture here, and trying to answer
the question: how to make a nerd cool? answer: it can't be done.

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Re: [GENERAL] MySQL versus Postgres

[John Gage]

I would also enquire whether one thinks that the examples should be  
removed from the Postgres documentation for fear that they may be cut  
and pasted into an application?


John


On Aug 6, 2010, at 3:13 PM, Torsten Zühlsdorff wrote:


John Gage schrieb:

On reflection, I think what is needed is a handbook that features  
cut and paste code to do the things with Postgres that people do  
today with MySQL.


Everyone of my trainees want such thing - for databases, for other  
programming-languages etc. It's the worst thing you can give them.  
The< will copy, they will paste and they will understand nothing.  
Learning is the way to understanding, not copying.


Greetings,
Torsten
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Re: [GENERAL] MySQL versus Postgres

[John Gage]

If I recall correctly William Shakespeare did a ton of cutting and  
pasting.  And he was not alone.  My Fair Lady, one of the most  
successful Broadway shows ever, contains whole sections from Shaw's  
play.


We learn by imitation.  I am not suggesting that once you cut and  
paste you call it quits, but it is the only place to begin.


John


On Aug 6, 2010, at 3:13 PM, Torsten Zühlsdorff wrote:


John Gage schrieb:

On reflection, I think what is needed is a handbook that features  
cut and paste code to do the things with Postgres that people do  
today with MySQL.


Everyone of my trainees want such thing - for databases, for other  
programming-languages etc. It's the worst thing you can give them.  
The< will copy, they will paste and they will understand nothing.  
Learning is the way to understanding, not copying.


Greetings,
Torsten
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Re: [GENERAL] MySQL versus Postgres

[John Gage]

I only said this to criticize it.  And I agree completely with Thomas.

John


On Aug 6, 2010, at 2:09 PM, Thomas Kellerer wrote:


John Gage wrote on 06.08.2010 04:41:

But most people, including myself, don't even want to know the
documentation exists (for anything). We just want to plunge in and  
do it.


That just doesn't work and is an attitude that won't get you far.

In order to do things properly you need to learn and understand what  
you are dealing with. "Plunging" into something might look easy at  
the start but will get you into problems later when you need to  
understand *why* and *how* things are working.


This is not something unique to Postgres or databases in general.  
It's not even unique to software.
Learn what youare doing (or dealing with) is a "strategy" that  
applies to everything you do.


Do take the time to read the manuals - including the MySQL manual  
(because just "plunging" into MySQL simply doesn't work either)

It'll make you a lot more proficient in the long run.

Regards
Thomas



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Re: [GENERAL] MySQL versus Postgres

[John Gage]

On reflection, I think what is needed is a handbook that features cut  
and paste code to do the things with Postgres that people do today  
with MySQL.


Such a handbook, featured as the first section of the documentation,  
would take readers through the steps necessary to set up an online  
shopping site, for example, with Postgres.  Cut and paste code is  
absolutely crucial to the success of such a document.


Make it easy.  Make it easy.  Our road in the yellow wood has to be  
the one you can go down the easiest.


John


On Aug 6, 2010, at 1:39 PM, Phillip Smith wrote:

On 6 August 2010 16:08, Torsten Zühlsdorff   
wrote:


I receive my "oh wow" when i do the same things in Postgres like in  
MySQL: Writting some procedures, triggers and use foreign key. The  
"oh wow" was that it just *works*. After some years of using MySQL  
this is a very uncommon feeling, even if you are experienced which  
MySQL. ;)



I'm going the other way -- I first started SQL/RDBMS with  
PostgreSQL, and now I'm starting to have to deal with MySQL for some  
things at work. I know exactly how to do what I want in PG, but  
doing the same thing in MySQL is ten times more complicated and has  
me pulling my hair out :(



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[GENERAL] MySQL versus Postgres

[John Gage]

Postgres has a very gentle learning curve.  By which I mean that it  
takes an extremely long time, perhaps a lifetime, to fully appreciate  
it.  On the other hand, it is definitely worth it.  Each new discovery  
is worth the effort and the wait.


But most people, including myself, don't even want to know the  
documentation exists (for anything).  We just want to plunge in and do  
it.


So, perhaps what is needed in any sort of battle with MySQL is an  
introductory documentation that gives specific examples of how to  
achieve "oh wow!" worthwhile results quickly with Postgres.


I am sure that this is already in place.  Perhaps it needs to be  
separated from the regular documentation and buffed to make it truly  
short and truly rewarding to study.  And showcased.


This is the better version of my dumbing down idea.

John

P.S. I noticed in my brief journey into the MySQL docs that they used  
color (ineffectively) and they attempted a kind of bulleted outline  
format.


P. P. S. You want to get to grandma's house.  You want to drive a  
car.  You want to learn to drive the car quickly.


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Re: [GENERAL] Which CMS/Ecommerce/Shopping cart ?

[John Gage]

Shopping carts, company blogs, etc.  Popular pieces of software.

As common denominators go, that's pretty low.

Perhaps what is needed is a dumbed down version of Postgres.

My hobby horse.  MySQL supports regular expressions...  In a [rhymes  
with rat's ass].  It "supports" a kind of tinker toy reduced set of  
regular expressions.


But I guess nobody's complaining.

I just hope that Postgres keeps having enough support so that it can  
continue to be developed.  Until Apple adopted Unix, it was basically  
dead in the water.  Even then, it was probably iPod's that really kept  
it alive.  But it's still alive.


I don't know.

John




On Jul 29, 2010, at 9:52 PM, Sandeep Srinivasa wrote:

If I want to throw together a company blog + mailing list + SEO, I  
can get it done using Wordpress in a matter of hours.


Same for shopping carts, though there is no single canonical  
software that I can name - all of them are strictly or strongly  
MySQL only. These are restrictions that cannot (and should not)


how bad postgres is as compared to mysql, in context of all the  
popular pieces of software out there.






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Re: [GENERAL] Clarification of the "simple" dictionary

[John Gage]

By default it has no Init options, so it doesn't check for stopwords.


In the first place, this functionality is a rip-snorting home run on  
Postgres.  I congratulate Oleg who I believe is one of the authors.


In the second, I too had not read (carefully) the documentation and am  
very happy to find that I can eliminate stop words with 'simple'.   
That will be a tremendous convenience going forward.


It turns out that using 'english' and getting stemmed lexemes is  
extremely convenient too, but this functionality in 'simple' is  
excellent.


Thanks,

John



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Re: [GENERAL] Clarification of the "simple" dictionary

[John Gage]

The easiest way to look at this is to give the simple dictionary a  
document with to_tsvector() and see if stopwords pop out.


In my experience they do.  In my experience, the simple dictionary  
just breaks the document down into the space etc. separated words in  
the document.  It doesn't analyze further.


John


On Jul 22, 2010, at 4:15 PM, Andreas Joseph Krogh wrote:

Hi. It's not clear to me if the "simple" dictionary uses stopwords  
or not, does it?
Can someone please post a complete description of what the "simple"  
dict. does?


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[GENERAL] Differences between Postgres and MySql

[John Gage]

John Gage, 25.06.2010 11:50:

I am astonished to discover that MySQL does not support
regular expressions much less something like tsvector.


Getting really off-topic now: but MySQL does support Regex

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/regexp.html


I have done an extensive comparison between MySQL's support for regexp  
and Postresql's and, frankly, there is no comparison.  The support in  
Postgresql is far greater than in MySQL.  This is not a flame.  It is  
intended to help anyone choosing between the two programs.


The best example I can present is the regexp_split_to_table function  
in Postgres.  I use it all the time.  It is enormously convenient.   
Anyone analyzing text is ecstatic to have such a powerful function  
readily available.


This is a qualitative difference.

John



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[GENERAL] Postgres table contents versioning

[John Gage]

Is there an equivalent of svn/git etc. for the data in a database's  
tables?


Can I set something up so that I can see what was in the table two  
days/months etc. ago?


I realize that in the case of rapidly changing hundred million row  
tables this presents an impossible problem.


The best kludge I can think of is copying the tables to a directory  
and git-ing the directory.


Thanks,

John



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Re: [GENERAL] Re: Need Some Recent Information on the Differences between Postgres and MySql

[John Gage]

Disabused.

On Jun 25, 2010, at 11:59 AM, Thomas Kellerer wrote:



Getting really off-topic now: but MySQL does support Regex

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/regexp.html




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Re: [GENERAL] Need Some Recent Information on the Differences between Postgres and MySql

[John Gage]

In the words of Dwight Eisenhower, I couldn't fail to disagree with  
you less.  That said...


Replying to my own post, and on further examination of the MySQL  
documentation, I am astonished to discover that MySQL does not support  
regular expressions much less something like tsvector.  Please  
disabuse me of this idea if I am mistaken.


To me, this turns MySQL into a toy.  Regular expressions are an  
extraordinarily powerful tool rooted in science that make manipulating  
text data infinitely easier.  To leave them out of a system (recall  
that the Macintosh is based on Unix and supports egrep, for example,  
out of the box) is unbelievably backward.


Why extirpate part of your brain if you don't have to?  MySQL thus  
becomes part of Gödel's inferred conspiracy to make men stupid.


John

P.S.  I am aware that MySQL has its own, roll your own, text search  
capability...which adds insult to injury.


P. P. S.  I realize that there is an element of flame here.  However,  
the facts are the facts and anyone wanting to judge between Postgres  
and MySQL has to deal in facts.



On Jun 25, 2010, at 11:37 AM, A. Kretschmer wrote:



I think, this is the wrong place to explain mysql-features...




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Re: [GENERAL] Need Some Recent Information on the Differences between Postgres and MySql

[John Gage]

Forgive me for being somewhat stupid, but is MyISAM a text search  
engine?  The Wikipedia article doesn't make it sound like one.


Could you be more specific as to how, for example, MySQL implements  
regular expressions or the tsvector funcitionality?


John


On Jun 25, 2010, at 10:33 AM, Rob Wultsch wrote:


 The built in MyISAM
solution is the best known



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Re: [GENERAL] Need Some Recent Information on the Differences between Postgres and MySql

[John Gage]

There are features, are there not, that Postgres has that MySQL does  
not have?


I refer in particular to things like tsvector.

Am I mistaken in this?

John


On Jun 25, 2010, at 3:46 AM, Rob Wultsch wrote:


unless there was a specific reason to migrate



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Re: [GENERAL] Does enterprisedb.com down?

[John Gage]

I ran the IP on http://whatismyipaddress.com/blacklist-check and it is  
not blacklisted.



On Jun 15, 2010, at 6:53 AM, M. Bashir Al-Noimi wrote:

Now I wondering does postgresql forbids my country or not?, is it  
open source or something else?



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Re: [GENERAL] Hosting without pgcrypto functions. There are other solutions?

[John Gage]

Have you talked to A2 about this?  They are very good about installing  
things.


John


On Jun 14, 2010, at 3:20 PM, Merlin Moncure wrote:

On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 4:37 PM, Andre Lopes  
 wrote:

Hi,

I have an account in A2Hosting.com, and I'm developing some  
functions that

deal with encryption.

A2Hosting.com don't have available the function "digest()"




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Re: [GENERAL] Cognitive dissonance

[John Gage]

UFB!  This was definitely worth the visit from the Nebula.

Thanks very, very much.

Sensational.

Thanks again,

John Gage


On Jun 12, 2010, at 6:01 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote:


http://momjian.us/expire/

The new rule name is postgres.txt.  The file size are:

7,789,730  postgres.html
5,155,672  postgres.txt

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Re: [GENERAL] Cognitive dissonance

[John Gage]

It was.  But if the compromise is single file html, that is a vast  
improvement over the current system imho.


What I want is the thing that is maximally amenable to being searched  
conveniently using all the tools at our disposal especially regular  
expressons.  The point has been made that Google is the best system to  
search for Postgres documentation/knowledge/etc.  Frankly, I don't  
necessarily agree with that, particularly for the novice.  The  
documentation is where it is at, and it is the documentation that is  
referenced the most in these posts.


But there are no dichotomies here.  It is not either or.  It is a  
balance between what is easiest to produce and maintain and what is  
most productive to use.


And the background for my request is my respect for the extraordinary  
power and elegance of postgres.


John


On Jun 12, 2010, at 3:10 PM, Tom Lane wrote:


Peter Eisentraut  writes:

On lör, 2010-06-12 at 11:18 +0200, John Gage wrote:

A one file html version would be a godsend.


I've committed a build target for that now.  Use 'make  
postgres.html' in

doc/src/sgml/.


Huh, is that actually worth anything?  How many browsers will open it
without crashing, or will navigate the page with decent performance
if they do manage to open it?

(Not that I object to providing this Make target.  But I thought the
discussion was about plain-text output.)

regards, tom lane

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Re: [GENERAL] Cognitive dissonance

[John Gage]

A one file html version would be a godsend.


On Jun 12, 2010, at 3:20 AM, Bruce Momjian wrote:


Robert Gravsjö wrote:
I am for #1, not so much for #2, mainly on the grounds of size.   
But
given #1 it would be possible for packagers to make their own  
choices

about whether to include plain-text docs.


Wouldn't it suffice to make it downloadable, like the pdf doc?


And/or make the HTML version downloadable side by side with the PDF.


That might be easy to do.  We already build the HTML, and requiring
people to recursively use wget is not user-friendly.

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Re: [GENERAL] Cognitive dissonance

[John Gage]

Like all visitors from the Crab Nebula (except our leaders who are  
genetically separate) I qualify as a novice when it comes to  
Postgres.  What is more, the people (humans, that is) who need the  
documentation the most are those who, well, need the documentation the  
most.


Hence, if this were to be made available, it would be great if it was  
novice speed.


Thanks everyone for even contemplating it.

John



Well, there are two separate things here:

* providing a Makefile target to build plain-text output.

* shipping prebuilt plain text docs in standard distributions.

I am for #1, not so much for #2, mainly on the grounds of size.  But
given #1 it would be possible for packagers to make their own choices
about whether to include plain-text docs.


Wouldn't it suffice to make it downloadable, like the pdf doc?




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Re: [GENERAL] Cognitive dissonance

[John Gage]

1) On a list that howls with complaints when posts are in html, it is  
surprising that there is resistance to the idea of documentation in  
plain text.


2) Posters are correctly referred to the documentation as frequently  
as possible.  In fact, very frequently.  The frequency might decrease  
if the documentation were in plain text.  It is easier to search a  
single plain text file than any other source, except perhaps the  
database itself.


3) Postgres is getting pushed off the map at the low end by MySQL, now  
owned by Oracle.If Postgres ceased to exist, Ellison would be  
thrilled.  I chose A2 Hosting (with whom I am very happy) for my  
website because they support Postgres.  I'm writing cgi scripts in  
perl.  I had to install the postgres driver for dbi.  It was not pre- 
installed.  There are about four buttons for MySQL on the cPanel and  
two farther over on the right for Postgres.


An anecdote.  I discovered the tsvector functionality a while back.  I  
have used it to create indices for my text files and several other  
tasks.  I recently was re-looking at my files and saw  
"tsvector::text".  I had forgotten that the double colon is one way to  
cast a type.  Double colon is not in the html index of the  
documentation.  I found it by searching my plain text version of the  
pdf file.  In my opinion, the html documentation is useful for reading  
it like a novel or referencing it in these lists.



On Jun 8, 2010, at 9:56 PM, Josh Kupershmidt wrote:


Not that I see a whole lot of utility in this endeavor



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Re: [GENERAL] Cognitive dissonance

[John Gage]

Thank you all for your suggestions.  Thank you very much.

John


1) I suppose the next thing you'll be suggesting is that, because
Postgres is a database, the documentation should be stored as some
form of searchable table within the database itself?



--Well, that is exactly what I have done with the MeSH subject  
headings.  And it works like a charm.



2) Its also available in chm  windows help file format.  Which i find  
allot

more useful
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/manuals/
you could print chm to a text file.

--I'll have to boot over to XP, ugh.  Will do.


3)  also it not hard to dump a PDF document into a text file.

--I would print out what the dump looks like, but this is a family  
program



4) Would a \h+ that gave you the text from the web-page be useful..?   
That,

plus the various man pages, would cover an awful lot of what's in SGML..

From :
"The DocBook SGML source for the manuals is available as part of the  
PostgreSQL source download available in the FTP area."



-I'm headed there.  It's just that given the incredibly good  
documentation and the fact that it's available in just about every  
format except a text file, I was sort of hoping for a policy change on  
the part of the powers that be.






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[GENERAL] Cognitive dissonance

[John Gage]

Unix is a text-based operating system with unbelievably helpful text  
manipulation tools.


Postgres is a creature of Unix which happens to have unbelievable text  
searching and manipulation tools.


Yet, the only one file edition of the Postgres documentation is  
in...pdf format.  Huh?


I know.  I know.  I have already brought this up.  And various ways of  
creating a one file text edition of the documentation have been  
proposed to me.  I know.


But either I am a visitor from the Crab Nebula, or there is someone  
else out there who would like to have a text file of the entire  
documentation.


Two examples from other applications.

I use Vim.  Vim's documentation is as easy to access as any  
documentation on earth...as long as you know exactly what you are  
looking for.  Otherwise, it is a tremendous pain.


I also use the National Library of Medicine's MeSH subject headings.   
25,000 descriptors with definitions, synonyms and a lot of other  
things.  They give it to you in single files either as text, xml, or  
other ways.  Big files.  Hundreds of megabytes.  That makes it so that  
you can do just about anything with it you want.  It is one of the  
seven wonders of the world.


I do suggest that a plain text file of the entire documentation be  
made part of the documentation armamentarium.


Respectfully,

John Gage



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Re: [GENERAL] 110,000,000 rows

[John Gage]

I was aware that there are, in fact, many applications such as census  
data or cell phone calls that would easily surpass this number.   
However these applications exist in very large companies/organizations  
that can throw essentially unlimited resources at the problem.  One  
thinks of the NSA's computers, for example.


What I was surprised to learn is the extremely common occurence of  
table sizes like this even in databases run by single individuals for  
individual needs.


Putting aside the cognitive challenge posed by data like this, what  
made me glad to have asked the question were the solutions provided in  
the responses.


John



On Jun 1, 2010, at 10:27 PM, Steve Crawford wrote:


transaction records at a medium sized bank bank
Text messages, phone-bills, tweets, etc. I have single tables of  
market-research-related data that exceed 80-million rows.


But a question to the OP: Setting aside for the moment that  
85000*1400=119,000,000, not 110,000,000; what is the significance to  
you of these numbers?


Cheers,
Steve



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Re: [GENERAL] 110,000,000 rows

[John Gage]

Herbert Simon must be spinning in his grave...or smiling wisely.  What  
does a human do with a petabyte of data?


But when a desktop machine for $1700 retail has a terabyte of storage,  
the unix operating system, 4 gigs of memory, and an amazing 27 inch  
display, I guess hardware isn't the problem (and I know one could put  
together the same machine on Linux etc. for much less).


I sort of understood that the Amazon's of the world had this amount of  
data, but it looks like the phenomenon is much, much more widespread.


Thanks for the instruction.  It will come in handy.

John



On May 27, 2010, at 12:18 AM, da...@gardnerit.net wrote:


At work I have one table with 32 million rows, not quite the size you
are talking about, but to give you an idea of the performance, the
following query returns 14,659 rows in 405ms:

SELECT * FROM farm.frame
WHERE process_start > '2010-05-26';

process_start is a timestamp without time zone column, and is  
covered by
an index. Rows are reletively evenly distributed over time, so the  
index

performs quite well.

A between select also performs well:
SELECT * FROM farm.frame
WHERE process_start
 BETWEEN '2010-05-26 08:00:00'
   AND '2010-05-26 09:00:00';

fetches 1,350 rows at 25ms.

I also have a summary table that is maintained by triggers, which is a
bit of denormalization, but speeds up common reporting queries.

On 22:29 Wed 26 May , John Gage wrote:

Please forgive this intrusion, and please ignore it, but how many
applications out there have 110,000,000 row tables?  I recently
multiplied 85,000 by 1,400 and said now way Jose.

Thanks,

John Gage

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[GENERAL] 110,000,000 rows

[John Gage]

Please forgive this intrusion, and please ignore it, but how many  
applications out there have 110,000,000 row tables?  I recently  
multiplied 85,000 by 1,400 and said now way Jose.


Thanks,

John Gage

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Re: [GENERAL] Apache authorization using postgres

[John Gage]

I really like the idea of using postgres, as opposed to the file  
system, to store user names and passwords for http authorization on  
apache.  It is a very good fit and facilitates data collection, etc.


On the other hand, there is no dichotomy, because what is stored in a  
file can also be stored in postgres.


Ultimately, I increasingly like to push everything I can back into SQL  
on postgres.  Make the perl cgi routines as simple as possible and  
have the intelligence in postgres.


Yes, MacOSX 10.5.

Thanks,

John


On May 25, 2010, at 11:41 AM, Jasen Betts wrote:


On 2010-05-24, John Gage  wrote:

Is this the latest on this subject?


Debian has it it a precompiled binary package.
Blastwave is/was a solaris thing AFAICT
And I guessing you want it for apple.


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[GENERAL] Apache authorization using postgres

[John Gage]

Is this the latest on this subject?



Re: Apache2 PostgreSQL http authentication
• From: "Jeffrey Brower" 
• To: 
• Subject: Re: Apache2 PostgreSQL http authentication
• Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 20:29:27 -0400

First you need to make sure that the blastwave package for apache  
development is on your machine.


Use the blastwave command: pkg-get -i apache2_devel This gives you the  
headers you are missing from the apache binary install (as well as  
loading the libtool etc that the apxs command will use.


Now go to http://www.giuseppetanzilli.it/mod_auth_pgsql2/ and download  
the source. I put it in /Documents/mod_auth_pgsql2/mod_auth_pgsql-2.0.3


[snip]



Thanks,

John Gage
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Re: [GENERAL] Documentation availability as a single page of text

[John Gage]

Yes it would.  In fact, I have often wondered why this doesn't exist.   
How can I do it?


John


On May 12, 2010, at 12:14 PM, Peter Eisentraut wrote:


On lör, 2010-05-08 at 11:06 +0200, John Gage wrote:

Is the documentation available anywhere as a single page text file?
This would be enormously helpful for searching using regular
expressions in Vim, for example, or excerpting pieces for future
reference.


It would be pretty easy to produce a single big HTML file, if that
helps.


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Re: [GENERAL] Documentation availability as a single page of text

[John Gage]

I am using the Mac and, although the Mac does not ship with this, the  
Zotero add-on to Firefox includes it:


/Users/johngage/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/ 
m35vu1ez.default/zotero/pdftotext-MacIntel


Will try it out.  Thanks very much,

John



On May 10, 2010, at 1:58 PM, Geoffrey wrote:


Bruce Momjian wrote:

Bruce Momjian wrote:

John Gage wrote:
Is the documentation available anywhere as a single page text  
file?   This would be enormously helpful for searching using  
regular  expressions in Vim, for example, or excerpting pieces  
for future  reference.

Uh, no, and no one has ever asked for that.  There must be some tool
that will dump an HTML tree as a single text file.

Or maybe convert the PDF file to text.


On Linux:

/usr/bin/pdftotext


--
Until later, Geoffrey

"I predict future happiness for America if they can prevent
the government from wasting the labors of the people under
the pretense of taking care of them."
- Thomas Jefferson

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Re: [GENERAL] Documentation availability as a single page of text

[John Gage]

Converting the pdf it text is a gruesome experience on account of  
numerous carriage returns that don't belong there, etc.


Converting the docbook file to plain text is a possible solution, but  
I don't know exactly how to do that.  I will look into it.


The documentation, as is pointed out in approximately 20% of the  
messages on the list, is extraordinary.  Plain text, ultimately, gives  
the greatest access to it IMHO.


Thanks for the reply,

John



Bruce Momjian wrote:

John Gage wrote:



Or maybe convert the PDF file to text.




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[GENERAL] Documentation availability as a single page of text

[John Gage]

Is the documentation available anywhere as a single page text file?   
This would be enormously helpful for searching using regular  
expressions in Vim, for example, or excerpting pieces for future  
reference.


John

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Re: [GENERAL] Resetting serial type after "delete from table"

[John Gage]

Thanks very, very much.  I got as far as 8.1.4 and did not find 9.15.

May I suggest that the documentation have an index entry under  
"serial" for 9.15, which is a major heading whereas 8.1.4 is a minor  
heading and has its own index entry?


This is said from the perspective of awe for the documentation.

John


On May 8, 2010, at 10:30 AM, Leif Biberg Kristensen wrote:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/datatype-numeric.html#DATATYPE-
SERIAL

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/functions-sequence.html




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[GENERAL] Resetting serial type after "delete from table"

[John Gage]

If I "delete from table", which table contains a serial type field,  
and then insert new rows into the table "excluding the [serial] column  
from the list of columns in the INSERT statement", the numbers in the  
serial column resume where they left  off prior to the "delete from   
table": 639, 640, 641, 642 for example.


This behavior is totally acceptable, but is it possible to have the  
serial column reset itself to 1 following  "delete from table" (i.e.  
following flushing all the rows from the table)?  The only way I can  
think to do this is by altering the table by dropping the serial  
column and then altering it again by adding a new serial column before  
doing the insert.  That is only a couple of more lines of script, so I  
don't do the work, but is there an easier way?


Thanks,

John

Re: [GENERAL] Order of execution in shell echo to psql

[John Gage]

Thanks very much for elucidating this.  \g is going to help me in this  
situation more than the ;


John


On May 2, 2010, at 4:25 PM, Tom Lane wrote:


David W Noon  writes:

On Sun, 2 May 2010 14:13:52 +0200, John Gage wrote abour [GENERAL]

I issue the following command to the shell:

echo '\o file.txt \\ select * from table_name limit 10  \o ' |  
psql --

host 'localhost' --port 5432 --username 'johngage' 'database_name'



Try putting a semi-colon at the end of your SQL query.


Or put a \g there.  As it stands, execution of the SQL query is
triggered by the EOF at the end of the string.  So the fact that the
second \o got executed before that is unsurprising.

regards, tom lane

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[GENERAL] Order of execution in shell echo to psql

[John Gage]

I issue the following command to the shell:

echo '\o file.txt \\ select * from table_name limit 10  \o ' | psql -- 
host 'localhost' --port 5432 --username 'johngage' 'database_name'


I expect the results to be redirected to file.txt because that is the  
meta-command immediately preceeding the query.


In fact, the results go to stdout, obviously on account of the \o at  
the end of the query.  And, equally obviously, I can leave that out  
(which "works").


But I am surprised that the \o is the controlling meta-command.

Thanks,

John

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Re: [SQL] [GENERAL] Tsearch not searching 'Y'

[John Gage]

You can avoid stemming by using 'simple' instead of 'english' as the  
language of the words in to_tsvector (which is a little more awkward  
than the cast).


"There are no stop words for the simple dictionary. It will just  
convert to lower case, and index every unique word.

SELECT to_tsvector('simple', 'Andy andy The the in out');
 to_tsvector
 -
 'in':5 'out':6 'the':3,4 'andy':1,2
(1 row)

John


On Apr 29, 2010, at 4:01 PM, Tom Lane wrote:


"sandeep prakash dhumale"  writes:
I am trying to get tsearch working for my application but I am  
facing a

problem when alphabet 'Y' is the in the tsquery.



# SELECT 'hollywood'::tsvector  @@ to_tsquery('holly:*');
?column?
--
f
(1 row)


You can't use to_tsquery for this sort of thing, because it tries to
normalize the given words:

regression=# select to_tsquery('holly:*');
to_tsquery

'holli':*
(1 row)

If you do this it works:

regression=# SELECT 'hollywood'::tsvector  @@ 'holly:*'::tsquery;
?column?
--
t
(1 row)

So if you want to use prefix matching, don't normalize.

regards, tom lane

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Re: [GENERAL] Unable to run createlang (or psql for that matter)

[John Gage]

Do you know of any guides to ritual suicide?

On Apr 27, 2010, at 3:02 AM, Scott Mead wrote:


   Your path has 'PostgresPlus'



 Locate shows 'PostgreSQL'




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Re: [GENERAL] Unable to run createlang (or psql for that matter)

[John Gage]

To be perfectly honest, I don't believe it either, but here it is:

JohnGage:~ johngage$ echo $PATH
/opt/subversion/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/X11/bin:/ 
Library/PostgresPlus/8.4/bin:/usr/local/bin:~/Desktop/WritingTools/ 
EfficientAWK

JohnGage:~ johngage$ createlang -l
-bash: createlang: command not found
JohnGage:~ johngage$ which createlang
JohnGage:~ johngage$ locate createlang
/Library/PostgreSQL/8.4/bin/createlang
/Library/PostgreSQL/8.4/doc/postgresql/html/app-createlang.html
/Library/PostgreSQL/8.4/doc/postgresql/html/sql-createlanguage.html
/Library/PostgreSQL/8.4/share/man/man1/createlang.1
JohnGage:~ johngage$ cd /Library/PostgreSQL/8.4/bin
JohnGage:bin johngage$ createlang -l
-bash: createlang: command not found
JohnGage:bin johngage$ ./createlang -l
Password:
createlang: could not connect to database johngage: FATAL:  database  
"johngage" does not exist

JohnGage:bin johngage$ sudo su postgres
bash-3.2$ ./createlang -l
Password:
Procedural Languages
 Name | Trusted?
--+--

bash-3.2$

On Apr 27, 2010, at 1:47 AM, Scott Mead wrote:

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 3:36 AM, Jorge Arevalo > wrote:
On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 11:08 AM, John Gage   
wrote:

> If I open a bash terminal and type createlang -l, I get:
>
> JohnGage:~ johngage$ createlang -l
> -bash: createlang: command not found
> JohnGage:~ johngage$ psql
> -bash: psql: command not found
>
> as one can see, the same thing happens with psql.
>
> The way I have been using psql is by pulling down the plugins menu  
in

> pgAdmin3 and selecting (the only selection) psql.
>
> My $PATH variable includes the path to both createlang and psql.


 Not to say I am a 'dis-believer' or anything... but... can we see  
'echo $PATH' ... ?


--Scott

Re: [GENERAL] Unable to run createlang (or psql for that matter)

[John Gage]

Thank you.

The reason I wanted to use it interactively is, at base, ignorance.

I do not completely remember everything that happened when I installed  
Postgresql (on Mac OSX).  I did it with the Enterprise installer,  
however, that I do remember.


But what I begin to think is that *any* installation procedure for  
Postgres should/must include a blocking requirement that the installer  
set up a user account before the installation can proceed.


I would not even know that the user "postgres" existed had it not been  
for the fact that I kept tripping up over lack of access with my user  
account to the database (hence for example my placing files the  
database needs to access *outside* my user account where "postgres"  
can get at them).


At least I think that's what has happened.

As is true of so many things in life, I have tripped over a false  
dichotomy ("postgres" or "me").  The reality is "postgres" and "me".


John

P.S.  Which is not to say that there are not false syntheses in life.   
"Guns and butter" leaps to mind.





On Apr 26, 2010, at 10:58 AM, Dave Page wrote:

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 8:55 AM, John Gage   
wrote:


A very key difficulty is that if I attempt to add postgres as a  
user to my
system, my system tells me postgres already is a user.  But,  
unfortunately,
postgres as a user on my system has no password.  His postgresql  
password

does not work on the system.


The account doesn't have a password by default as it's a service
account and you shouldn't need to use it interactively.

If you really want to though, just set a password:

gator:~ dpage$ sudo passwd postgres
Changing password for postgres.
New password:
Retype new password:
gator:~ dpage$ su - postgres
Password:
gator:~ postgres$

--
Dave Page
EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise Postgres Company



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Re: [GENERAL] Unable to run createlang (or psql for that matter)

[John Gage]

Fascinatingly, to me at least, as follows (I threw in "which bash"):

JohnGage:~ johngage$ which createlang
JohnGage:~ johngage$ which psql
JohnGage:~ johngage$ which bash
/bin/bash

i.e. zilch

Here's what I am able to do:

JohnGage:~ johngage$ su postgres
Password:
su: Sorry
JohnGage:~ johngage$ sudo su postgres
bash-3.2$ which createlang
bash-3.2$ which psql
bash-3.2$ cd /Library/PostgreSQL/8.4/bin
bash-3.2$ ./createlang -l
Password:
Procedural Languages
 Name | Trusted?
--+--


In the "su:Sorry" after my attempt at a password for user "postgres" I  
am only showing that all the possible and the true password for  
postgres don't work.  No password works, i.e., you can't get there  
from here.


However, when I su as superuser (using not the root password but my  
"administrator" password on the Mac) I get to postgres.  Postgres too  
is unable to get any response for "which" but postgres can run  
createlang from the bin directory.


A very key difficulty is that if I attempt to add postgres as a user  
to my system, my system tells me postgres already is a user.  But,  
unfortunately, postgres as a user on my system has no password.  His  
postgresql password does not work on the system.


John



On Apr 26, 2010, at 9:36 AM, Jorge Arevalo wrote:

On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 11:08 AM, John Gage   
wrote:

If I open a bash terminal and type createlang -l, I get:

JohnGage:~ johngage$ createlang -l
-bash: createlang: command not found
JohnGage:~ johngage$ psql
-bash: psql: command not found

as one can see, the same thing happens with psql.

The way I have been using psql is by pulling down the plugins menu in
pgAdmin3 and selecting (the only selection) psql.

My $PATH variable includes the path to both createlang and psql.

What am I doing wrong?

John



What's your output for these commands?

which createlang
which psql







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Re: [GENERAL] UPDATE02Unable to run createlang (or psql for that matter)

[John Gage]

Question withdrawn.

Answered via documentation.


On Apr 25, 2010, at 11:08 AM, John Gage wrote:


If I open a bash terminal and type createlang -l, I get:

JohnGage:~ johngage$ createlang -l
-bash: createlang: command not found
JohnGage:~ johngage$ psql
-bash: psql: command not found

as one can see, the same thing happens with psql.

The way I have been using psql is by pulling down the plugins menu  
in pgAdmin3 and selecting (the only selection) psql.


My $PATH variable includes the path to both createlang and psql.

What am I doing wrong?

John





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Re: [GENERAL] UPDATE01: Unable to run createlang (or psql for that matter)

[John Gage]

I have made some progress by looking at the documentation and at how  
Mac OSX sets up privileges.


If I su to root and then su to postgres, I can access createlang and  
psql (although my user $PATH seems to be inoperative).


What I can't do is su from me as user (not root) to postgres.  I get  
asked for a password that is not any password that exists.  For  
example, it is not the password that postgres uses to get to the  
databases.


I am now going to see if I can find the mystery password for postgres.


On Apr 25, 2010, at 11:08 AM, John Gage wrote:


If I open a bash terminal and type createlang -l, I get:

JohnGage:~ johngage$ createlang -l
-bash: createlang: command not found
JohnGage:~ johngage$ psql
-bash: psql: command not found

as one can see, the same thing happens with psql.

The way I have been using psql is by pulling down the plugins menu  
in pgAdmin3 and selecting (the only selection) psql.


My $PATH variable includes the path to both createlang and psql.

What am I doing wrong?

John





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[GENERAL] Unable to run createlang (or psql for that matter)

[John Gage]

If I open a bash terminal and type createlang -l, I get:

JohnGage:~ johngage$ createlang -l
-bash: createlang: command not found
JohnGage:~ johngage$ psql
-bash: psql: command not found

as one can see, the same thing happens with psql.

The way I have been using psql is by pulling down the plugins menu in  
pgAdmin3 and selecting (the only selection) psql.


My $PATH variable includes the path to both createlang and psql.

What am I doing wrong?

John





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Re: [GENERAL] Footnote: ISP provider with postgres and perl dbi

[John Gage]

After carefully examining what was out there, decided again to go with  
hub.org.


Thanks again

John


On Apr 24, 2010, at 5:55 PM, Steve Atkins wrote:

If an ISP is offering virtual private servers (where you get full  
access to your own virtual machine) then installing postgresql and  
perl on them will be trivial (just one command on popular linux  
distributions). So if you're wanting to run the database in your VM  
then most anyone offering VPS hosting will have what you need.  
You're unlikely to get perl or postgresql specific support - but  
your ISP isn't where you'd usually look for that.


If you want somewhere that offers both virtual machines and managed  
postgresql hosting that's tougher, but http://www.postgresql.org/support/professional_hosting 
 is probably a good place to start.



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Re: [GENERAL] ISP provider with postgres and perl dbi

[John Gage]

Thank you for your reply and the reference.  Excellent.

On Apr 24, 2010, at 5:55 PM, Steve Atkins wrote:



On Apr 24, 2010, at 8:40 AM, John Gage wrote:

I know this is perhaps an inappropriate question (and to some  
extent I am repeating myself), but I now need to get my website up  
and running.


Would anyone be willing to suggest an ISP that offers virtual  
machines running postgres and perl 5.8.8 or above with perl dbi?   
The ideal candidate would offer something reasonably priced with  
some level of support.


If an ISP is offering virtual private servers (where you get full  
access to your own virtual machine) then installing postgresql and  
perl on them will be trivial (just one command on popular linux  
distributions). So if you're wanting to run the database in your VM  
then most anyone offering VPS hosting will have what you need.  
You're unlikely to get perl or postgresql specific support - but  
your ISP isn't where you'd usually look for that.


If you want somewhere that offers both virtual machines and managed  
postgresql hosting that's tougher, but http://www.postgresql.org/support/professional_hosting 
 is probably a good place to start.


Cheers,
 Steve


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[GENERAL] ISP provider with postgres and perl dbi

[John Gage]

I know this is perhaps an inappropriate question (and to some extent I  
am repeating myself), but I now need to get my website up and running.


Would anyone be willing to suggest an ISP that offers virtual machines  
running postgres and perl 5.8.8 or above with perl dbi?  The ideal  
candidate would offer something reasonably priced with some level of  
support.


The hub.org site is fairly opaque about its offerings these days, or,  
given its heritage, I would go there immediately.  If M. Fournier is  
listening, perhaps he can send a précis.


I apologize in advance for this intrusion.

John Gage
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Re: [pgadmin-support] [GENERAL] Byte order mark added by (the envelope please...) pgAdmin3 !!

[John Gage]

Additionally, if the Vim option "bomb" is set to "nobomb" it will  
strip the BOM.  This solves my "problem" by permitting editing files  
in both Vim and pgAdmin3 Query tool and then being able to run the  
files in psql.


:set nobomb   [in Vim]


On Apr 22, 2010, at 12:12 PM, Magnus Hagander wrote:


FYI, psql in PostgreSQL 9.0 will ignore UTF8 BOMs.



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Re: [pgadmin-support] [GENERAL] Byte order mark added by (the envelope please...) pgAdmin3 !!

[John Gage]

I think I should clarify my original "problem" and what I see as the  
difficulty in general.


I saved a UTF-8 file with the pgAdmin Query tool, which added the BOM  
to the beginning of the file during the save.


I then attempted to run the file using psql with the \i meta command.

I got a syntax error pointing at the very beginning of the file which  
turned out to be on account of the BOM.


In other words, files saved with pgAdmin3 Query tool cannot then be  
run as files of SQL commands by psql.


The two applications are incompatible at that level.


On Apr 22, 2010, at 11:50 AM, Dave Page wrote:

On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 10:41 AM, John Gage   
wrote:

This may be germane:

Filename: trunk/pgadmin3/src/ui/pgadmin3.lng
Revision 2954 - (view) (download) - [select for diffs]
Modified Sun Nov 30 20:13:28 2003 GMT (6 years, 4 months ago) by  
andreas

File length: 1301 byte(s)
Diff to previous 2840
adding UTF-8 BOM


No, that's a BOM being added to a multi-language source file.
pgAdmin's Unicode support has always written an appropriate BOM to
Unicode files. See
http://svn.pgadmin.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/trunk/pgadmin3/pgadmin/utils/utffile.cpp

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Re: [pgadmin-support] [GENERAL] Byte order mark added by (the envelope please...) pgAdmin3 !!

[John Gage]

This may be germane:

Filename: trunk/pgadmin3/src/ui/pgadmin3.lng
Revision 2954 - (view) (download) - [select for diffs]
Modified Sun Nov 30 20:13:28 2003 GMT (6 years, 4 months ago) by andreas
File length: 1301 byte(s)
Diff to previous 2840
adding UTF-8 BOM

I do not think that it is a feature. Instead I think it is a bug in  
the
query parser. The BOM is a non-breakable space character. Leading  
space

characters should not harm.



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[GENERAL] Byte order mark added by (the envelope please...) pgAdmin3 !!

[John Gage]

Well, well, well.  Guess who the culprit is...

I edited the file both in Vim and in pgAdmin3 (1.10.2, Mar 9 2010, rev  
8217), and the BOM shows up after saving the file with pgAdmin3.


I don't know if pgAdmin3 wants to keep this feature...

Thank everyone again for the excellent help.

John


On Apr 22, 2010, at 9:37 AM, Richard Huxton wrote:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_order_mark

Tends to get added if you go through a Windows system. Useless for  
utf-8 afaik. Confuse the hell out of you because various tools parse  
and hide them then you pipe the file to a script and everything  
falls over.


Bunch of scripts available here to remove them:
 http://www.xs4all.nl/~mechiel/projects/bomstrip/

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Re: [GENERAL] Identical command-line command will not work with \i metacommand and filename

[John Gage]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_order_mark

Tends to get added if you go through a Windows system. Useless for  
utf-8 afaik. Confuse the hell out of you because various tools parse  
and hide them then you pipe the file to a script and everything  
falls over.


Bunch of scripts available here to remove them:
 http://www.xs4all.nl/~mechiel/projects/bomstrip/


Correct.  I found the following via Google.
"I created a file utf8.rb with this content: C:\>ruby -e "p  
File.read('utf8.rb')" "\357\273\277puts \"Hello World\""
The "\357\273\277" part is the Byte Order Mark for UTF-8, my editor  
automatically put it at the beginning of the file, because I saved it  
as UTF-8."

At least it isn't some evil virus.  Have to do Mr. WorkAround now.
Thank you very much for your help Scott and Richard,
John Gage


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Re: [GENERAL] Identical command-line command will not work with \i metacommand and filename

[John Gage]

Oh, I should add.  Everything, the database, vim, is UTF-8.

On Apr 22, 2010, at 3:34 AM, Scott Mead wrote:

   run:

   od -a CopySql.sql

  Look at the beginning, that'll show you character by character  
what's in there (should reveal anything hidden).





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Re: [GENERAL] Identical command-line command will not work with \i metacommand and filename

[John Gage]

Yeesh.  What the ding-dong is this?

JohnGage:EFNWebsite johngage$ od -a CopySql.sql
000?   ?   ?   s   e   l   e   c   t  sp   *  sp   f   r   o   m
020   sp   m   e   s   h   _   d   e   s   c   r   i   p   t   o   r
040s   ;  nl  nl

What are the ?'s.  Mon Dieu, what is going on?

This is a file that runs perfectly well in pgAdmin and that I edit in  
Vim.


Sorry to be so ignorant and thanks,

John Gage


On Apr 22, 2010, at 3:34 AM, Scott Mead wrote:


Do you have some funky hidden characters at the beginning of the file?

   run:

   od -a CopySql.sql




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[GENERAL] Identical command-line command will not work with \i metacommand and filename

[John Gage]

I enter the identical command:

select * from mesh_descriptors;

using the psql command line and it works perfectly.

The same command in a file produces an immediate syntax error:

EFNWeb=# \i ./CopySql.sql
psql:./CopySql.sql:1: ERROR:  syntax error at or near "select"
LINE 1: select * from mesh_descriptors;

when run from a file using \i

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks,

John Gage
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Re: [GENERAL] "1-Click" installer problems

[John Gage]

Thanks very, very much for this.  I am truly grateful.

On Apr 2, 2010, at 2:44 PM, Sachin Srivastava wrote:


Yes you need to re-install.. (uninstall and install again).
You can point the new installation to the old data directory if you  
want..


On 4/2/10 4:25 PM, John Gage wrote:


I am incredibly interested in this.

In the first place, I did not load postgres from the command line  
as you do here.  I double-clicked.  I also do not remember seeing  
the usage options.


That being said, now that I have downloaded and installed the  
system, how can I change:




 --serviceaccount  Sets the operating system user  
account that owns the server process. Defaults to 'postgres'.

Default: postgres


Or, in fact, must I re-install to change this?  It looks like I  
have to re-install.

Re: [GENERAL] "1-Click" installer problems

[John Gage]

I am incredibly interested in this.

In the first place, I did not load postgres from the command line as  
you do here.  I double-clicked.  I also do not remember seeing the  
usage options.


That being said, now that I have downloaded and installed the system,  
how can I change:




 --serviceaccount  Sets the operating system user  
account that owns the server process. Defaults to 'postgres'.

Default: postgres


Or, in fact, must I re-install to change this?  It looks like I have  
to re-install.


Thank you very much for responding to my questions.  I truly  
appreciate it.  Your support is welcome and superb.


John





On Apr 2, 2010, at 9:52 AM, Sachin Srivastava wrote:


Thats what i get:

edbs-MacBook:~ sachin$ hdiutil attach postgresql-8.4.3-1-osx.dmg
expected   CRC32 $F9B026D4
/dev/disk1  Apple_partition_scheme
/dev/disk1s1Apple_partition_map
/dev/disk1s2Apple_HFS  /Volumes/ 
PostgreSQL 8.4.3-1
edbs-MacBook:~ sachin$ sudo /Volumes/PostgreSQL\ 8.4.3-1/ 
postgresql-8.4.3-1-osx.app/Contents/MacOS/installbuilder.sh --help

Password:
PostgreSQL 8.4
Usage:

 --help Display the list of valid options

 --version  Display product information

 --optionfile   Installation option file
Default:

 --unattendedmodeui  Unattended Mode UI
Default: none
Allowed: none minimal  
minimalWithDialogs


 --debuglevel   Debug information level of verbosity
Default: 2
Allowed: 0 1 2 3 4

 --mode   Installation mode
Default: qt
Allowed: qt osx text unattended

 --debugtrace   Debug filename
Default:

 --installer-language  Language selection
Default:
Allowed: en es

 --extract-only 
Default: 0

 --superaccount   Sets the user name of the database  
superuser. Defaults to 'postgres'.

Default: postgres

 --servicename servicename.description
Default: postgresql-8.4

 --serviceaccount  Sets the operating system user  
account that owns the server process. Defaults to 'postgres'.

Default: postgres

 --create_shortcuts  Specifies whether or not menu  
shortcuts should be created.

Default: 1

 --prefix   Installation Directory
Default: /Library/PostgreSQL/8.4

 --datadir Data Directory
Default: /Library/PostgreSQL/8.4/data

 --superpassword  Password
Default:

 --serverport   Port
Default: 5432

 --locale   Locale
Default:

 --install_plpgsql  Install pl/pgsql in template1  
database?

Default: 1


On 4/2/10 1:14 PM, John Gage wrote:


There is a CLI option where?  Forgive my ignorance, please.  Does  
it appear in the one-click installer?


John


On Apr 2, 2010, at 9:19 AM, Sachin Srivastava wrote:

There is a CLI option --serviceaccount  which a user can  
use to make any user the owner of postgres service and data files.


Also, if you choose 'postgres' as the service account and the  
'postgres' user doesn't exist. The installer will create postgres  
as a 'locked' user account. Thats the reason you dont see  
'postgres' listed as any other normal user. These steps were taken  
to enhance the security of the data folder.


Again, anytime a user is free to use any account as the service  
account and not use 'postgres'.


On 4/2/10 12:37 PM, John Gage wrote:


Then I don't understand why the installer doesn't do the same  
thing.


Or, in the alternative, why it doesn't ask you what you want  
these parameters to be.


I would say that, typically, someone installing postgres does it,  
conceivably, as root or, more likely, as a user.


What he or she doesn't do is install it as user 'postgres'.

Yet, that is what the one-click installer does.  I do not believe  
that this is intuitive.  What is more, gratuitiously adding a  
user to the system doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense.


In addition, all other one-click installations on the Mac either  
don't ask for root privileges, because they don't need them, or  
ask for them, but still install under the current user.  Some  
installations will even ask whether you want the application  
usable by all users of the machine or just you.


But none, repeat none, creat

Re: [GENERAL] "1-Click" installer problems

[John Gage]

I'm not quite as brain-dead as this statement makes me sound.  I use  
posgres' back-up system to back up the databases.  I don't copy the  
files.


On Apr 2, 2010, at 12:15 PM, John Gage wrote:

And the only reason I know that 'postgres' owns my data (or did) is  
that I wanted to back up the files.  Why else would I know?



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Re: [GENERAL] "1-Click" installer problems

[John Gage]

On Apr 2, 2010, at 10:28 AM, Craig Ringer wrote:

b) Run as your user. What if you remove the user later - crunch,  
your database just broke. If Pg was attacked successfully, the  
attacker wouldn't get root ... but they would get the ability to  
access and delete all your files.


Arguably (b) is an acceptable non-admin-install option for Mac OS X  
systems for non-production use with unimportant test data you can  
afford to lose. I'm not convinced it's a good idea, though.


First, I ask forgiveness for ignorance.

Second, the characterization in your second quoted paragraph is near- 
sighted.


"Mac OS X systems for non-production use" means that I don't run a car  
rental company.  I don't.  But "non-production"?  Well, I use postgres  
for things that are extremely important to me.  What's more, I intend,  
in the very near future, to have postgres as the back-end to an  
internet system that will hopefully be in use by 85,000 French nursing  
students, which I suppose is a form of  "production".  And when I load  
the tables into the postgres implementation of whatever ISP I choose,  
all the meshugas around permissions will disappear as far as I'm  
concerned.


But "unimportant test data you can afford to lose"?  Please.  Anyone  
who uses any database system for more than 10 minutes regards his or  
her data as important and definitely not affordable to lose.  I have  
triply redundant back-up for my data.  And the only reason I know that  
'postgres' owns my data (or did) is that I wanted to back up the  
files.  Why else would I know?


Apple has a "database" product which is intended for individuals and  
their data.  It is called Bento.  It has a charming interface and it  
does what it does well.  No chain of pain.


But there is one teeny, tiny problem.  It's a ridiculous ersatz iTunes  
clone that has nothing to do with databases.  And, like everything  
else in modern interfaces, the back-end is sqlite which doesn't cut it  
one little bit.   Bento files are sqlite files accessible by sqlite.   
So you might as well run sqlite in the first place and get it over  
with, but that's only if you're not really interested in a database.


Postgres, on the other hand, fully supports regular expressions, sql,  
etc. etc. etc. etc.  Postgres' clients psql and pgAdmin are perfectly  
extraordinary.  And finally the support in the embodiment of this list  
is unbelievable.  Incredible.


I don't think that b) is necessarily acceptable.  But if it isn't,  
then I really and truly wish that the very traditional way that  
postgres wants to set itself up were more transparent and  
controllable.  It is a wish.  Perhaps a fantasy.  But a fantasy is a  
wish (S. Freud).



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Re: [GENERAL] "1-Click" installer problems

[John Gage]

There is a CLI option where?  Forgive my ignorance, please.  Does it  
appear in the one-click installer?


John


On Apr 2, 2010, at 9:19 AM, Sachin Srivastava wrote:

There is a CLI option --serviceaccount  which a user can  
use to make any user the owner of postgres service and data files.


Also, if you choose 'postgres' as the service account and the  
'postgres' user doesn't exist. The installer will create postgres as  
a 'locked' user account. Thats the reason you dont see 'postgres'  
listed as any other normal user. These steps were taken to enhance  
the security of the data folder.


Again, anytime a user is free to use any account as the service  
account and not use 'postgres'.


On 4/2/10 12:37 PM, John Gage wrote:


Then I don't understand why the installer doesn't do the same thing.

Or, in the alternative, why it doesn't ask you what you want these  
parameters to be.


I would say that, typically, someone installing postgres does it,  
conceivably, as root or, more likely, as a user.


What he or she doesn't do is install it as user 'postgres'.

Yet, that is what the one-click installer does.  I do not believe  
that this is intuitive.  What is more, gratuitiously adding a user  
to the system doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense.


In addition, all other one-click installations on the Mac either  
don't ask for root privileges, because they don't need them, or ask  
for them, but still install under the current user.  Some  
installations will even ask whether you want the application usable  
by all users of the machine or just you.


But none, repeat none, create a new user.

What is more, through standard unix commands such as "who" or "cat / 
etc/passwd", I cannot find the user 'postgres' on my machine...even  
though he is the owner of the Postgres data files...on my machine.


There's the rub.  'postgres' owns files...my files...on my machine,  
yet he is not on my machine.  Not good.


I should add that I am an accolyte of Postgres and am only raising  
this (possible) issue in the most positive spirit I am capable of.   
In addition, I think that the people on this list are superb, and  
the responses are unbelievably helpful and accurate.


John


On Apr 2, 2010, at 8:29 AM, John R Pierce wrote:


John Gage wrote:

The 8.4.2 documentation says:

"The default user name is your Unix user name, as is the default  
database name."


when you as a user connect to the database server the commands  
like psql, pg_dump, etc all use your unix username as the default  
for the database username, and your username as teh default for  
the database name, unless you specify a different user and/or  
database on hte command line.









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Sachin Srivastava
EnterpriseDB, the Enterprise Postgres company.

Re: [GENERAL] "1-Click" installer problems

[John Gage]

If I do cat /etc/passwd, I get the following, which does not include  
'postgres'.  Yet id knows about 'postgres'.  And 'postgres' owns the  
data.


nobody:*:-2:-2:Unprivileged User:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
root:*:0:0:System Administrator:/var/root:/bin/sh
daemon:*:1:1:System Services:/var/root:/usr/bin/false
_uucp:*:4:4:Unix to Unix Copy Protocol:/var/spool/uucp:/usr/sbin/uucico
_lp:*:26:26:Printing Services:/var/spool/cups:/usr/bin/false
_postfix:*:27:27:Postfix Mail Server:/var/spool/postfix:/usr/bin/false
_mcxalr:*:54:54:MCX AppLaunch:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_pcastagent:*:55:55:Podcast Producer Agent:/var/pcast/agent:/usr/bin/ 
false
_pcastserver:*:56:56:Podcast Producer Server:/var/pcast/server:/usr/ 
bin/false

_serialnumberd:*:58:58:Serial Number Daemon:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_devdocs:*:59:59:Developer Documentation:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_sandbox:*:60:60:Seatbelt:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_mdnsresponder:*:65:65:mDNSResponder:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_ard:*:67:67:Apple Remote Desktop:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_www:*:70:70:World Wide Web Server:/Library/WebServer:/usr/bin/false
_eppc:*:71:71:Apple Events User:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_cvs:*:72:72:CVS Server:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_svn:*:73:73:SVN Server:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_mysql:*:74:74:MySQL Server:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_sshd:*:75:75:sshd Privilege separation:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_qtss:*:76:76:QuickTime Streaming Server:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_cyrus:*:77:6:Cyrus Administrator:/var/imap:/usr/bin/false
_mailman:*:78:78:Mailman List Server:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_appserver:*:79:79:Application Server:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_clamav:*:82:82:ClamAV Daemon:/var/virusmails:/usr/bin/false
_amavisd:*:83:83:AMaViS Daemon:/var/virusmails:/usr/bin/false
_jabber:*:84:84:Jabber XMPP Server:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_xgridcontroller:*:85:85:Xgrid Controller:/var/xgrid/controller:/usr/ 
bin/false

_xgridagent:*:86:86:Xgrid Agent:/var/xgrid/agent:/usr/bin/false
_appowner:*:87:87:Application Owner:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_windowserver:*:88:88:WindowServer:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_spotlight:*:89:89:Spotlight:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_tokend:*:91:91:Token Daemon:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_securityagent:*:92:92:SecurityAgent:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_calendar:*:93:93:Calendar:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_teamsserver:*:94:94:TeamsServer:/var/teamsserver:/usr/bin/false
_update_sharing:*:95:-2:Update Sharing:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_installer:*:96:-2:Installer:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_atsserver:*:97:97:ATS Server:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_unknown:*:99:99:Unknown User:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false



John


On Apr 2, 2010, at 9:29 AM, John R Pierce wrote:

thats not even possible unless the macos doesn't use /etc/passwd as  
its user database.I dunno much about macosx, but everything I  
hear about it sounds like they took unix and twisted it all around.



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Re: [GENERAL] "1-Click" installer problems

[John Gage]

I lied.  The Unix id command produces:

JohnGage:~ johngage$ id postgres
uid=502(postgres) gid=1(daemon) groups=1(daemon)

The one-click installer should be very clear about all this.

I think we are very close to Steve Jobs "Chain of Pain" here.

And, once again, I am absolutely dedicated to Postgres.

John



On Apr 2, 2010, at 8:29 AM, John R Pierce wrote:


John Gage wrote:

The 8.4.2 documentation says:

"The default user name is your Unix user name, as is the default  
database name."


when you as a user connect to the database server the commands like  
psql, pg_dump, etc all use your unix username as the default for the  
database username, and your username as teh default for the database  
name, unless you specify a different user and/or database on hte  
command line.




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Re: [GENERAL] "1-Click" installer problems

[John Gage]

Then I don't understand why the installer doesn't do the same thing.

Or, in the alternative, why it doesn't ask you what you want these  
parameters to be.


I would say that, typically, someone installing postgres does it,  
conceivably, as root or, more likely, as a user.


What he or she doesn't do is install it as user 'postgres'.

Yet, that is what the one-click installer does.  I do not believe that  
this is intuitive.  What is more, gratuitiously adding a user to the  
system doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense.


In addition, all other one-click installations on the Mac either don't  
ask for root privileges, because they don't need them, or ask for  
them, but still install under the current user.  Some installations  
will even ask whether you want the application usable by all users of  
the machine or just you.


But none, repeat none, create a new user.

What is more, through standard unix commands such as "who" or "cat / 
etc/passwd", I cannot find the user 'postgres' on my machine...even  
though he is the owner of the Postgres data files...on my machine.


There's the rub.  'postgres' owns files...my files...on my machine,  
yet he is not on my machine.  Not good.


I should add that I am an accolyte of Postgres and am only raising  
this (possible) issue in the most positive spirit I am capable of.  In  
addition, I think that the people on this list are superb, and the  
responses are unbelievably helpful and accurate.


John


On Apr 2, 2010, at 8:29 AM, John R Pierce wrote:


John Gage wrote:

The 8.4.2 documentation says:

"The default user name is your Unix user name, as is the default  
database name."


when you as a user connect to the database server the commands like  
psql, pg_dump, etc all use your unix username as the default for the  
database username, and your username as teh default for the database  
name, unless you specify a different user and/or database on hte  
command line.






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Re: [GENERAL] "1-Click" installer problems

[John Gage]

The 8.4.2 documentation says:

"The default user name is your Unix user name, as is the default  
database name."


Not so much.  My one-click installer creates a user 'postgres' who  
becomes the default user name...as well as the owner of the data file.


Is postgres arguing with itself here? Or at least in its one-click  
incarnation on the Mac.


In Nikhil's world, I would say that the clients are pretty carefully  
tightened down in terms of privileges.  And apparently Vista has  
enabled more tightening down.


John



On Apr 2, 2010, at 6:43 AM, Craig Ringer wrote:

I log in as an Administrator-enabled user, but have UAC turned on.  
This means that in fact I'm using non-admin rights unless/until I  
accept a UAC prompt.



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Re: [GENERAL] "1-Click" installer problems

[John Gage]

I will bet a bucket of day-old squid that this is a user rights problem.

On Apr 2, 2010, at 6:43 AM, Craig Ringer wrote:

I log in as an Administrator-enabled user, but have UAC turned on.  
This means that in fact I'm using non-admin rights unless/until I  
accept a UAC prompt.



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Re: [GENERAL] "1-Click" installer problems

[John Gage]

This is of interest to me, because something similar happens on the  
Mac (with the one-click installer).


The data directory is placed in a file that user 'postgres' has  
permission on.  Of course, this is a new user, created by postgres,  
but what it ends up meaning is that I run all my postgres files under  
root instead of in my user directory.


Now, I know that is stupid, cludgy, and probably un-American, but it  
was the simplest work-around I came up with.


I wonder if the problems arise because user 'postgres' is being  
created on the Windows machine and no one expects him, knows he's  
there, or has ever met him?


John


On Apr 1, 2010, at 9:09 AM, Thomas Kellerer wrote:


Nikhil G. Daddikar, 01.04.2010 08:04:


In about 30 seconds I found the following unanswered threads  
relating to
installation on Windows Vista. If anybody is interested I can find  
more.


The problem with this kind of statistics is that you will only find  
people who complain, you'll never find people who do not complain  
because they have no problems. Actually that's true for all internet  
forums or mailing lists: you'll seldomly find people posting  
something like  "Hey everything works fine, I had no problems".


All the posts seem to share the same root cause: the data directory  
has been put into "c:\Program Files" but a regular user does not  
have write permissions on that directory. As the installer is  
usually run with Administrator rights, the directory can be created  
but the service (or initdb) runs under a normal user account that  
cannot write to that directory because.


I do not like the installer's suggestion to put the data directory  
into c:\Program Files either, I think this should default to %APPDATA 
% instead of %ProgramFile%. I bet half of the problems would go away  
if the installer refused to put the data directory into c:\Program  
Files.


Given the fact that Microsoft finally tries to enforce people not to  
work as Administrators makes this even more important.


My suggestion is to try to use a different data directory when  
installing Postgres and make sure that the postgres service account  
is allowed to read and write that directory.


Personally I switched to using the ZIP packages completely because  
it is so much easer (unzip, initdb, pg_ctl -register, done)


Thomas




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Re: [GENERAL] Running Windows on a Mac partition

[John Gage]

This response came in as I was mea culpa-ing.

Everything here is correct to the best of my knowledge.

And I am very glad to be warned not to go between the two OS's.

Thank you,

John


Personally, what I'd do would be create a virtual machine image with
something like VMWare - something that is supported on both Mac OS X  
and

on Windows. Put it somewhere both systems can access it - probably the
Windows NTFS partition. Then, whichever OS you're using, start the
virtual machine with Pg on it and use that server over the virtual
network between the VM and the real host.

Alternately, you could just point Pg at a data-dir on storage that  
both

systems can access, as described earlier. I'd be pretty wary of doing
this, though.

--
Craig Ringer



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Re: [GENERAL] Running Windows on a Mac partition

[John Gage]

Unfortunately, but no unexpectedly, I have been moderately stupid in  
this question.


Using Bootcamp, the OS's are *not* running simultaneously.  Hence, the  
server, which is on the Mac is not running when Win is running.  There  
is the possibility for the Mac to *read* files in Win, but that is as  
far as the cross-talk goes.  Win does not know that Mac exists.


That is Bootcamp.

There are other solutions, Parallels is one, that permit Win and Mac  
to run simultaneously.  Win in that case is a virtual machine.  In  
that case the two "OS's" talk to each other.  But it is still a cludgy  
environment, and I don't want to spend the money on another Win OEM OS.


Sorry to have not really done my homework on this question, and thank  
you for your suggestions.  Clearly, TCP/IP would work...if the Mac  
were running at the same time.


As a footnote, given the entirely different virus susceptibilities of  
the two systems, it is probably better to run a separate server and  
data file(s) on each machine.


John


On Mar 30, 2010, at 11:46 PM, Scott Marlowe wrote:

On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 1:57 PM, John Gage   
wrote:
I just wondered if I could access the same 8.4.2 server from the  
Windows
partition (XP via "Bootcamp") as I do from the Mac partition on my  
Mac?


Assuming both virtual machines (or the virtual machine and the host)
are up at the same time, it's more of a networking issue that anything
else.  As long as the pg_hba.conf and postgresql.conf files have
entries allowing outside machines to connect via TCP/IP you should be
able to just point your windows partition over to the IP of the Mac
partition and be set.



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Re: [GENERAL] Running Windows on a Mac partition

[John Gage]

a method of
"dual booting" Windows and Mac OS. Meaning, that either one or the  
other

would be running at any given point of time.


The impression I was under was that both OSes were active and you just
flipped between the two with a sort of super alt-tab command.


In the case of Bootcamp, only one OS is in operation at the same time  
(there are other solutions, Parallels is one, that run simultaneously,  
but they are not as fast).


However, each OS, while it is running has access to the other's file  
system, though these file systems are different to some extent (which  
is configurable).



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[GENERAL] Running Windows on a Mac partition

[John Gage]

I just wondered if I could access the same 8.4.2 server from the  
Windows partition (XP via "Bootcamp") as I do from the Mac partition  
on my Mac?


Thanks,

John

P.S.  In other words, do I have to duplicate everything on the two  
"machines"?


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Re: [GENERAL] How long will the query take

[John Gage]

I will report back on this and attempt to give the particulars.  It  
will take 24 hours due to other time commitments.


Thank you very much for explaining :) this to me.

When I used only the first  10,000 rows of the 100+ thousand rows in  
the original table (of two tables) I was working with, I got the  
result I wanted in 10 minutes, which was really probably 80% of what I  
wanted.  Nevertheless, I do not want to fly blind in the future.


John


On Mar 29, 2010, at 7:10 PM, Bill Moran wrote:


In response to Andreas Kretschmer :


Bill Moran  wrote:

No, not really. But you can (and should) run EXPLAIN   
to
obtain the execution plan for that query, und you can show us  
this plan
(and the table-definition for all included tables). Maybe someone  
is able

to tell you what you can do to speed up your query.


To piggyback on this ... EXPLAIN _is_ the way to know how long your
query will take, but keep in mind it's only an _estimate_.

Given that, in my experience EXPLAIN is pretty accurate 90% of the
time, as long as you analyze frequently enough.


As far as i know, EXPLAIN _can't_ say how long a query will take, it
returns only a COST, not a TIME.


Correct.


Or can you tell me how long this query will be take?

test=# explain select * from foo;
 QUERY PLAN
---
Seq Scan on foo  (cost=0.00..34.00 rows=2400 width=4)
(1 Zeile)


EXPLAIN ANALYZE a few other queries of various complexity, and I'll be
able to translate that estimate to a time.

No, it's not 100% accurate, but (as I stated earlier) in my  
experience,

it gives you a pretty good idea.


Okay, it's a really little table and a really simple plan ... but
imagine, i have a table with 100 millions rows and a) a slow disk  
and b)

a fast SSD.


You're absolutely correct, and that's something that I should not have
omitted from my previous response.  Translating the cost into a time
estimate is highly hardware-dependent, and not 100% accurate, so run
some tests to get an idea of what your cost -> time ratio is, and take
those cost estimates with a grain of salt.

--
Bill Moran
http://www.potentialtech.com
http://people.collaborativefusion.com/~wmoran/

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[GENERAL] How long will the query take

[John Gage]

I ran a query out of pgAdmin, and (as I expected) it took a long  
time.  In fact, I did not let it finish.  I stopped it after a little  
over an hour.


I'm using 8.4.2 on a Mac with a 2.4GHz processor and 2GB of RAM.

My question is: is there a way to tell how close the query is to being  
finished.  It would be a great pity if the query would have finished  
in the 10 seconds after I quit it, but I had no way of telling.


As a postscript, I would add that the query was undoubtedly too  
ambitious.  I have a reduced set version which I will run shortly.   
But I am still curious to know if there is a way to tell how much time  
is left.


Thanks,

John

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Re: [GENERAL] Does anyone use in ram postgres database?

[John Gage]

Thanks very, very much for this reply.  It is extremely useful.

So far, I have not run into anything remotely resembling a performance  
barrier in Postgres.   I'm still looking :-)




On Mar 26, 2010, at 4:43 PM, Ozz Nixon wrote:


On 3/26/10 11:12 AM, John Gage wrote:
As a  kind of [very?] dumb question, is this where SQLite has been  
used?  I am just curious.

All questions are good ones, as that is how we all learn. ;-)

SQLite is useful for small foot print environments, along with  
simpler solutions like XBase (DBase) files. They tend to be quick  
and easy for implementation and usage, not robust for enterprise  
multi-user systems. (Not trying to stat a flame war, just the facts).


Enterprise engines are great for day to day transactional data flow,  
a few thousand reads with fewer writes. When you start to exceed  
writes to reads, then this is where you need to decide -- are those  
writes for audit and archive, or are those writes compounding the  
results of the reads.


   If they are archive/history and audit as needed, this is where  
partitionable databases come to mind, or even simplistic text files  
(encrypted if needed).


   If they are compounding your reads then the fork in the road  
appears... there are questions you have to ask yourself about the  
'now' and '3 years from now' of your data. For example, the original  
statement was that running the SQL engine in RAM mode only handled 3  
times more data requests, and that is not enough (I assume). There  
are probably database designs and query techniques that could  
improve your performance -- but does that answer the now or the 3  
years from now need? We spend hours on each of our database designs,  
and our queries - and sometimes the queries force us to redesign the  
schema so we can milk out a few hundred more queries in our time of  
measurement (minutes, seconds, or hours).


   We had an existing solution in place which was capable of  
processing 10,000 queries a minute. At the point of design, that was  
more than our customer thought of doing. 8 months later, they were  
starting to see waits on their processes for our solution. I spent  
the next 2 days redesigning a simple socket listener with the data  
in RAM using link-lists, hashes and returning it back in XML.  
Introduced 5 additional queries to improve the quality of the  
results, and delivered it to them handling over 100,000 queries a  
second now.


   So with that said, the questions become:

What does your schema look like now?

What are your writing into the database?

How often are you writing?

What are you searching for?

How often are you searching?

How large is the result set that is flowing across the ether?

   There are times answer these questions, it is easier to see the  
problem is not the technology you are trying to leverage, but how  
you are using the technology. Then, there are times were you are  
trying to use the wrong technology. Answering those above will allow  
myself and the postgreSQL guru's to help you out.


* I use a wide range of SQL engines, depending upon budget, needs,  
etc. Along with developing custom solutions when the DB way is not  
tailored enough for a need. Hope that helps, and shows you,  
depending upon your needs for now and 36 months from now play a big  
roll in designs and re-designs.


O.

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Re: [GENERAL] Does anyone use in ram postgres database?

[John Gage]

As a  kind of [very?] dumb question, is this where SQLite has been  
used?  I am just curious.



On Mar 26, 2010, at 3:14 PM, Ozz Nixon wrote:


On 3/26/10 10:06 AM, Alan McKay wrote:
On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 4:15 PM, Scott Marlowe>  wrote:



These questions always get the first question back, what are you
trying to accomplish?  Different objectives will have different
answers.


We have a real-time application that processes data as it comes in.
Doing some simple math tells us that a disk-based DB cannot possible
perform fast enough to allow us to process the data.



I have to ask the obvious question... as we develop solutions which  
must process 100,000 queries a second. In those cases, we use a  
combination hash table and link-lists. There are times where SQL is  
not the right choice, it is great for simplifying indexing and locks  
- but prior to SQL *we* had to write code guys... and it sounds like  
you too need to go back to old-school programming techniques.


O.

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[GENERAL] Answer to my own question

[John Gage]

I had forgotten about hub.org.  That's where I'm headed.  Sorry for  
the interruption.


John

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[GENERAL] Best ISP for Postgres

[John Gage]

Does anybody want to share their opinion as to the best beginner ISP  
that supports Postgres?


I want to use PHP against a Postgres database.  Hostpoint in  
Switzerland gives you 10gig's for 9.9CHF (less than 7euros) per month  
as a starter package...with MySQL, which I definitely do not want.


Any ideas?

Thanks,

John

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Re: [GENERAL] Entering a character code in a query

[John Gage]

I would just like to thank Albe and Jasen for their responses.  What an
extraordinary environment Postgres is!  Human and computing.

On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Albe Laurenz wrote:

> John Gage wrote:
> > I would like to use the following query:
> >
> > SELECT english || '\n' || english || '\x2028' || french AS
> > output FROM vocab_words_translated;
> >
> > where \x2028 is the hexadecimal code for a soft carriage return.
> >
> > However, this does not work.
> >
> > Can anyone help with this problem?
>
> If you have PostgreSQL 8.4 with standard_conforming_strings = on,
> you could write:
>
> english || E'\n' || english || U&'\2028' || french
>
> Otherwise, you have to resort to
>
> english || E'\n' || english || chr(8232) || french
>
> (provided your server_encoding is UTF8).
>
> Yours,
> Laurenz Albe
>
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[GENERAL] Entering a character code in a query

[John Gage]

I would like to use the following query:

SELECT english || '\n' || english || '\x2028' || french AS output FROM  
vocab_words_translated;


where \x2028 is the hexadecimal code for a soft carriage return.

However, this does not work.

Can anyone help with this problem?

Thanking you,

John

Pertinent codes:

2028	LINE SEPARATOR * may be used to represent this semantic  
unambiguously

U+2028, character
‬, decimal 8232, hex 0x2028, octal \20050, binary 1000101000  
UTF-8: 0xe2 0x80 0xa8 

[GENERAL] ArgoUML SQL code generator for PostgreSQL

[John Gage]

Is there an SQL "code" generator for ArgoUML for Postgres?  I have not been
able to find it, which does not mean it is not there.

Thanking you,

John

[GENERAL] Absent output from psql

[John Gage]

This is a series of commands I issued to psql:

1) EFN=# \o aatest01.txt \i ./TestQuery01.txt
2) EFN=# \i ./TestQuery01.txt
3) EFN=# \p
4) select * from vocabulary_sources
;
5) EFN=# \g
6) EFN=# \p
7) select * from vocabulary_sources
;
8) EFN=# \echo yes man
9) yes man

I have numbered the lines for convenience only.

After I execute line 1), the results of the two queries contained in the
TestQuery01.txt file can be found in aatest01.txt.  Good.  Excellent.

However, line 2) results in no output to any place I can discover.
 Definitely not to the terminal screen I am typing in.

Nonetheless line 3) prints the query buffer on the screen.  And \echo prints
what follows to the screen.

There seem to be two different STDOUT, one of which is in another dimension.

Please tell me what I am doing wrong.

Thanks very much,

John

Re: [GENERAL] Problems with the Windows 8.4.1 upgrade from 8.3 on non-C drive

[John Gage]

I realize that this is a feature and not a bug, but what I ran into  
confronting the same issue was the fact that the servers listen on  
different ports and when I uninstalled the older version, the newer  
version was listening on a non-standard port.  This caused some  
confusion for awhile.


I also realize that having both versions on the same port may be both  
impossible and unwise or some power of both, but is there a standard  
port that they are "competing" for in some dark server hell.



On Feb 26, 2010, at 4:57 AM, Sachin Srivastava wrote:

The one-click installers are designed in such a way that you can  
have different major versions of postgresql co-exist on the same  
machine. Thats the reason, the 8.4.1 installer doesn't realize that  
8.3 is even installed.



On 2/26/10 12:56 AM, dtrobert wrote:


Hi,
We have tried this at least with Windows 2008 64-bit server and the  
problem

is very reproducible (multiple systems):

1. Install 8.3 on some non-C drive (say E:\)
2. Run the 8.4.1 installer to upgrade this install


it appears that the 8.4.1 doesn't realize 8.3 is even installed

Result: Installation fails with a permission problem. It seems  
certain files
from 8.3 are not able to be deleted. When I manually try to delete  
them,
even with the Administrator user, it fails. I ultimately needed to  
take
ownership and then give Full Control before I was allowed to delete  
them.


There is no problem with this upgrade on the C:\ drive.

Thanks




--
Regards,
Sachin Srivastava
EnterpriseDB, the Enterprise Postgres company.

Re: [GENERAL] Row ordering after CREATE TABLE AS...SELECT regexp_split_to_table(source_text, regexp) AS new_column

[John Gage]

Thank you very much for this explanation/reply.  It precisely answers  
my question.


Unfortunately, it prompts a new question.  I am using 8.4.2 which I  
assume is new enough to trigger a "yes" response to "If you have a  
version new enough to have synchronize_seqscans...".  I have  
absolutely no idea how to turn that off.  Perhaps the best thing would  
be to direct me to the documentation where turning it off is described  
so that I can become more autonomous.  However, accompanying that with  
explicit directions would be welcome too.


I am in Greenwich +1 timezone, but I fear you are in the 2AM time  
zone.  Thank you again,


John


On Feb 24, 2010, at 8:06 AM, Tom Lane wrote:


John Gage  writes:

This is a two-part question:
1) I have a source_text that I want to divide into smaller subunits
that will be contained in rows in a column in a new table.  Is it
absolutely certain that the initial order of the rows in the  
resultant

table after this  operation:



CREATE TABLE new_table AS SELECT regexp_split_to_table(source_text,
E'regexp') as subunits FROM source_table;



will be the same as the order of these subunits in the original text?


If you have a version new enough to have synchronize_seqscans, you'd
need to turn that off.  Otherwise should be OK.


2) I would like to be able to create a serial-type column during
CREATE TABLE AS in the new table that "memorizes" this order so  
that I

can reconstruct the original text using ORDER BY on that serial
column.  However, I am stumped how to do that.


I think the trick is to get the SRF to be expanded before the serial
values are assigned.  There's more than one way to do it, but I think
(too tired to experiment) this would work:

 CREATE TABLE new_table (id serial, subunits text);

 INSERT INTO new_table(subunits) SELECT  
regexp_split_to_table(source_text,

   E'regexp') FROM source_table;

regards, tom lane



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[GENERAL] Row ordering after CREATE TABLE AS...SELECT regexp_split_to_table(source_text, regexp) AS new_column

[John Gage]

This is a two-part question:

1) I have a source_text that I want to divide into smaller subunits  
that will be contained in rows in a column in a new table.  Is it  
absolutely certain that the initial order of the rows in the resultant  
table after this  operation:


CREATE TABLE new_table AS SELECT regexp_split_to_table(source_text,  
E'regexp') as subunits FROM source_table;


will be the same as the order of these subunits in the original text?   
Emphasis *initial order*.


2) I would like to be able to create a serial-type column during  
CREATE TABLE AS in the new table that "memorizes" this order so that I  
can reconstruct the original text using ORDER BY on that serial  
column.  However, I am stumped how to do that.  I do not see how to  
put the name of that column into my SELECT statement which generates  
the table, and I do not see where else to put it.  Please forgive my  
stupidity.


The "work-around" to this problem has been to ALTER my table after its  
creation with a new serial-type column.  But this assumes that the  
answer to Question 1) above is always "Yes".


Thanking you for your understanding,

John


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Re: [GENERAL] Sorting performance vs. MySQL

[John Gage]

I am under the impression that MySQL does not have anything resembling  
Postgres' support for regular expressions.  Though some might think  
that regular expressions are a sort of poor man's SQL, in any  
application which manages large amounts of text they are crucial.   
Postgres definitely does not suck.


Is this the authoratative webpage for "Snowball" (which I never  
realized was a play on "Snobol")?


http://snowball.tartarus.org/

Thanks,

John


On Feb 23, 2010, at 6:51 AM, Yang Zhang wrote:


I'm relieved that Postgresql itself does not, in fact, suck,



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Re: [GENERAL] PostgreSQL fails to start

[John Gage]

I have had the same/similar problem on a Mac.  Postgres creates a user  
"postgres" and the only way that user can see files is for them to  
exist outside of any other particular user's home directory.  I placed  
the files in the root directory!?  I would like, I think, to give  
"postgres" privileges in my home directory (emphasis, I think).  As a  
sign of despicable laziness, could I ask where the granting of user  
privileges is documented in the 8.4 docs?


John


On Feb 20, 2010, at 5:13 PM, Heddon's Gate Hotel wrote:

Thanks very much for the tip, Ray - it has led me to discover the  
Windows Event Viewer, which I did not even know existed.  It was a  
sort of help, because it enabled me - eventually - to diagnose that  
the problem was to do with directory permissions.


I had installed PostgreSQL with its data directory set to be under  
the Administrator's "home" directory, since that is the account I  
log on as.  It seems that PostgreSQL, running as user postgres,  
couldn't see this directory.  I have since reinstalled PostgreSQL,  
setting the data directory to be somewhere that Windows doesn't seem  
to restrict the permissions of (that weirdness is another whole  
story), and it runs fine.


This is a real gotcha in the PostgreSQL Windows installation process  
- it should give you at least a warning about trying to create a  
data directory in a location that is not accessible to the postgres  
user.


It also seems to show a weakness in PostgreSQL's logging, in that  
(a) it would help a lot if it just printed its error to stderr, and  
(b) the log message it did send to the event log was of the form  
"directory not found" rather than "permission denied".


Eddie

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