hello pgsql-hackers,

I'm very very very... new here, but...
Well, I see you're all stressed by the new release comming up soon, but may
be one of you guys has got an ear and a couple of words for a smb who really
wants to get involved.

me: I think, I've got enough programming experience to get involved, if smb.
really want's to take a look at what I can, please go to
http://www.pbit.org/me_e.html
I used to work with SQL databases in many projects, and PostgreSQL was the
better one :-)

why I'm here: well, I don't think, that I really can become an
internals-guru after I read some of your messages here - it would take a
long time - and I think, you guys don't need anyone new in the
internals-kitchen. But I checked out your TODOs and I found an exotic issue,
which sound interesting to me: to make a PostgreSQL database to work like an
Oracle database to clients - it's not small and is not a bugfix, so I don't
have to know about the deepest internals of PostgreSQL to implement it.

my questions: is there smb. already working on it? Is it smth. this database
realy needs? Did you guys worked out any usable docs about what's the
ultimate way to implement such a feature (I just see a listener-idea in the
list)? Or is it the right time to discuss smth. like that?
Or is there an other "major" feature waiting for it's implementation and
being more urgent?

rgds
Pavlo



Mon, 24 Dec 2001 17:26:34 +0100
"Pavlo Baron" <pb@pbit.org>
Smb to get involved
Hi Pavlo, welcome aboard! Like any good free software collaborative
project, PostgreSQL is always happy to have new contributors. Just be
prepared for public, honest, _productive_ criticism of your code. If
you've got an itch to make an Oracle compatability layer, scratch away:
noone here will try to tell you what you _should_ be working on. Do
note that being 'just like Oracle' is not a major goal for the project,
but making it easy to port or write software against both databases is.

If you decide to take a look at this, I'd suggest talking to the OpenACS
people, and in particular  Don Baccus <dhogaza@pacifier.com> who pops
up here occasionally: they've probably ported more code from Oracle to
PostgreSQL than anybody, and have a good idea about the niggly little
details you'd need to address.

Ross

On Mon, Dec 24, 2001 at 05:26:34PM +0100, Pavlo Baron wrote:
> hello pgsql-hackers,
> 
> I'm very very very... new here, but...
> Well, I see you're all stressed by the new release comming up soon, but may
> be one of you guys has got an ear and a couple of words for a smb who really
> wants to get involved.
> 
> me: I think, I've got enough programming experience to get involved, if smb.
> really want's to take a look at what I can, please go to
> http://www.pbit.org/me_e.html
> I used to work with SQL databases in many projects, and PostgreSQL was the
> better one :-)
> 
> why I'm here: well, I don't think, that I really can become an
> internals-guru after I read some of your messages here - it would take a
> long time - and I think, you guys don't need anyone new in the
> internals-kitchen. But I checked out your TODOs and I found an exotic issue,
> which sound interesting to me: to make a PostgreSQL database to work like an
> Oracle database to clients - it's not small and is not a bugfix, so I don't
> have to know about the deepest internals of PostgreSQL to implement it.
> 
> my questions: is there smb. already working on it? Is it smth. this database
> realy needs? Did you guys worked out any usable docs about what's the
> ultimate way to implement such a feature (I just see a listener-idea in the
> list)? Or is it the right time to discuss smth. like that?
> Or is there an other "major" feature waiting for it's implementation and
> being more urgent?
> 
> rgds
> Pavlo
> 
> 
> 
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster

Thu, 3 Jan 2002 12:12:20 -0600
"Ross J. Reedstrom" <reedstrm@rice.edu>
Re: Smb to get involved
Ross J. Reedstrom writes:

> Hi Pavlo, welcome aboard!

:-)

> Like any good free software collaborative
> project, PostgreSQL is always happy to have new contributors. Just be
> prepared for public, honest, _productive_ criticism of your code.

oh yeah, I've already comunicated with some core gurus (Tom, Bruce, Thomas)
between years about providing a fix for a TODO-item, but it seems to me, the
thing I implemented would never match their expectations about how to fix
smth. lying deep in the basic code. I thought, nobody ever replies to my
first, Oracle-related email, so I used the moment to take a look at the
deepest basics. Then, I nerved those guys a little ,) Now, I really don't
think the codebase to be the right thing to me - in my honest opinion -
there is a great amount of code written by smb. else and there are
sufficient codebase experts having and being able to fix all those bugs. But
this playing around did really help me to understand some basic concepts of
the parser.

> If
> you've got an itch to make an Oracle compatability layer, scratch away:
> noone here will try to tell you what you _should_ be working on. Do
> note that being 'just like Oracle' is not a major goal for the project,
> but making it easy to port or write software against both databases is.

I never wanted to make PostgreSQL=Oracle, oh no. My original idea was to get
involved by providing a translation service or a part of it to overlay one
of it with the other one. I found some code and an Oracle-specific TODO in
the source-tree thinking a bit different from the idea with a Net8 listener
from the main TODO - I found this one terrible - maybe because I couldn't
find any free documentation on how to implement the Net8 layer.
I think, a complete SQL-translater for both databases would be the first
step. But there are very very many features with Oracle missing in PG, so
the translater Oracle2PG would get a little bit tricky to shallow some
things.
Is it interesting to discuss this theme now? (Smb. said, it's the wrong
moment now for such discussions.) I didn't want to appear where everybody
got stressed with the release completion.

rgds
Pavlo Baron


Thu, 3 Jan 2002 19:59:03 +0100
"Pavlo Baron" <pb@pbit.org>
Re: Smb to get involved