diff --git a/doc/FAQ b/doc/FAQ index cbe64060e60ddb0dbf96acf82350cc98542dc9ac..c0728c25c71cabcee0021c8cb4a4f8692f4fae20 100644 --- a/doc/FAQ +++ b/doc/FAQ @@ -1,7 +1,7 @@ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for PostgreSQL - Last updated: Sat Feb 28 10:04:28 EST 1998 + Last updated: Wed Apr 15 12:47:01 EDT 1998 Current maintainer: Bruce Momjian (maillist@candle.pha.pa.us) @@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ Questions answered: 1.12) What tools are available for hooking PostgreSQL to Web pages? 1.13) Does PostgreSQL have a graphical user interface? A report generator? A embedded query language interface? - 1.14) What is a good book to learn SQL? + 1.14) How can I learn SQL? 1.15) What languages are available to communicate with PostgreSQL? 2) Installation/Configuration questions @@ -57,7 +57,8 @@ Questions answered: 2.10) All my servers crash under concurrent table access. Why? 2.11) How do I tune the database engine for better performance? 2.12) What debugging features are available in PostgreSQL? - 2.13) How do I enable more than 32 concurrent backends? + 2.13) How do I enable more than 32 concurrent backends? 2.14) What + non-unix ports are available? 3) Operational questions @@ -243,8 +244,7 @@ Section 1: General Questions 1.6) Latest release of PostgreSQL - The latest release of PostgreSQL is version 6.3, which was released on - March 1st, 1998. + The latest release of PostgreSQL is version 6.3.2. We plan to have major releases every three months. @@ -260,21 +260,19 @@ Section 1: General Questions 1.8) What documentation is available for PostgreSQL? A user manual, manual pages, and some small test examples are included - in the distribution. The sql and built-in manual pages are - particularly important. + in the distribution. The pgintro, sql, and pgbuiltin manual pages are + particularly important. pgintro contains a list of all available + manual pages. + + psql has some nice \d commands to show information about types, + operators, functions, aggregates, etc. The www page contains pointers to an implementation guide and five papers written about Postgres design concepts and features. 1.9) What version of SQL does PostgreSQL use? - PostgreSQL supports a subset of SQL-92. It has most of the important - constructs but lacks some of the functionality. The most visible - differences are: - * no HAVING clause under a GROUP BY - - On the other hand, you get to create user-defined types, functions, - inheritance etc. + PostgreSQL supports a subset of SQL-92. 1.10) Does PostgreSQL work with databases from earlier versions of PostgreSQL? @@ -290,7 +288,7 @@ Section 1: General Questions Those ugrading from versions earlier than 1.09 must upgrade to 1.09 first without a dump/reload, then dump the data from 1.09, and then - load it into 6.2.1 or 6.3 beta. + load it into 6.2.1 or 6.3. 1.11) Are there ODBC drivers for PostgreSQL? @@ -307,9 +305,9 @@ Section 1: General Questions * majordomo@listserv.direct.net OpenLink ODBC is very popular. You can get it from - http://www.openlinksw.com/postgres.html. It works with our standard - ODBC client software so you'll have PostgreSQL ODBC available on every - client platform we support (Win, Mac, Unix, VMS). + http://www.openlinksw.com. It works with our standard ODBC client + software so you'll have PostgreSQL ODBC available on every client + platform we support (Win, Mac, Unix, VMS). We will probably be selling this product to people who need commercial-quality support, but a freeware version will always be @@ -339,8 +337,9 @@ Section 1: General Questions We also have ecpg, which is an embedded SQL query language interface for C. This is also included. - 1.14) What is a good book to learn SQL? + 1.14) How can I learn SQL? + There is a nice tutorial at http://w3.one.net/~jhoffman/sqltut.htm Many of our users like The Practical SQL Handbook, Bowman et al, Addison Wesley. @@ -426,7 +425,7 @@ Section 2: Installation Questions 2.11) How do I tune the database engine for better performance? - There are two things that can be done. You can disable fsync() by + There are several things that can be done. You can disable fsync() by starting the postmaster with a '-o -F' option. This will prevent fsync()'s from flushing to disk after every transaction. @@ -439,6 +438,9 @@ Section 2: Installation Questions of memory used by each backend process for temporary sorts. Each buffer is 1K and the defualt is 512 buffers. + You can also use the CLUSTER command to group data in base tables to + match an index. See the cluster(l) manual page for more details. + 2.12) What debugging features are available in PostgreSQL? PostgreSQL has several features that report status information that @@ -489,6 +491,17 @@ Section 2: Installation Questions Edit include/storage/sinvaladt.h, and change the value of MaxBackendId. In the future, we plan to make this a configurable prameter. + + 2.13) What non-unix ports are available? + + It is possible to compile the libpq C library, psql, and other + interfaces and binaries to run on MS Windows platforms. In this case, + the client is running on MS Windows, and communicates via TCP/IP to a + server running on one of our supported Unix platforms. + + People have attempted to port our PostgreSQL database server to + Windows NT using the Cygnus Unix/NT porting library, but no one has + succeeded yet. _________________________________________________________________ Section 3: PostgreSQL Features @@ -598,7 +611,7 @@ Section 3: PostgreSQL Features 3.10) How do I do regular expression searches? case-insensitive regexp searching? - See the pgbuiltin manual page. Search for regular expression. + See psql's \do command. 3.11) I experienced a server crash during a vacuum. How do I remove the lock file? @@ -682,7 +695,7 @@ BYTEA bytea variable-length array of bytes The default configuration allows only unix domain socket connections from the local machine. To enable TCP/IP connections, use the postmaster -i option You need to add a host entry to the file - pgsql/data/pg_hba. See the hba_conf manual page. + pgsql/data/pg_hba. See the pg_hba.conf manual page. 3.18) How do I find out what indexes or operations are defined in the database?