Lane,
> So, here's my thought. How difficult would it be to build a server daemon
> that used PostgreSQL on the backend, and presented it to the network as a
> SQL Server compatible DB?
I think you're on the wrong list for this question. I take it you're
talking a compatibitily layer, like Rosetta?
I would think that writing a program to broker requests on port 1433 and
re-interpret SQL Server specific syntax would be a managable project for a
good C or Perl hacker. What would be difficult-to-impossible is:
1) making it scale & perform well (in my experience, MS SQL Server accessed
through Rosetta loses about 40% performance and is very limited in
scalability).
2) Making it integrate well with MS networking and the MS ODBC/OLEDB/ADO/.NET
clients.
Also, if you have T-SQL procedures, you would have to somehow implement T-SQL
for Postgres; translating the procedures is really not an option.
--
-Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco