All the aforementioned are proprietary, closed source forks. tPostgres and Postgres-
XC are two budding forks that we find interesting with open source licensing. tPostgres
braches off PostgreSQL 9.2 and targets Microsoft SQL Server users. For instance, with
tPostgres, you can write functions using T-SQL. Postgres-XC is a cluster server pro-
viding write-scalable, synchronous multi-master replication. What makes Postgres-XC
special is that it supports distributed processing and replication. It is now at version 1.0.
Administration Tools
There are three popular tools for managing PostgreSQL and these are supported by
PostgreSQL core developers; they tend to stay in synch with PostgreSQL versions. In
addition, there are plenty of commercial offerings as well.
psql
psql is a command-line interface for writing queries and managing PostgreSQL. It
comes packaged with some nice extras, such as an import and export commands
for delimited files, and a reporting feature that can generate HTML output. psql
has been around since the beginning of PostgreSQL and is a favorite of hardcore
PostgreSQL users. Newer converts who are more comfortable with GUI tools tend
to favor pgAdmin.
pgAdmin
This is the widely used, free, graphical administration tool for PostgreSQL. You
can download it separately from PostgreSQL. pgAdmin runs on the desktop and
can connect to multiple PostgreSQL servers regardless of version or OS. Even if
you have your database server on a window-less Unix-based server, install pgAd-
min and you’ll find yourself armed with a fantastic GUI. pgAdmin is pictured in
Figure 1-1.
Some installers, such as those offered by EnterpriseDB, package pgAdmin with the
database server install. If you’re unfamiliar with PostgreSQL, you should definitely
start with pgAdmin. You’ll get a great overview and gain an appreciation of the
richness of PostgreSQL just by exploring all the database objects in the main in-
terface. If you’re coming from SQL Server and used Management Studio, you’ll
feel right at home.
PHPPgAdmin
PHPPgAdmin, pictured in Figure 1-2, is a free, web-based administration tool pat-
terned after the popular PHPMyAdmin for MySQL. PostgreSQL has many more
kinds of database objects than MySQL, as such PHPPgAdmin is a step up from
PHPMyAdmin with additions to manage schemas, procedural languages, casts,
operators, and so on. If you’ve used PHPMyAdmin, you’ll find PHPPgAdmin to
be nearly identical.
2 | Chapter 1: The Basics