"Robert Paresi" <firstname@lastname.net> writes:
> Hello,
>
> We have 700 user install base using Sybase SQL Anywhere 9.02
>
> We are looking at migrating these installations over to PostGres
>
> 1. Very Very Short Answer Please - why should we?
Cheaper? Perhaps faster? It's tough to guess, absent of metrics as to
why you might prefer Postgres.
> 2. Does anyone have a utility or migration application to read SQL
> Anywhere to go to PostGres
Usually, what's done here is to use whatever tools are built-in to:
a) Pull out the DDL defining the schema;
b) Dump the data as a series of INSERT statements.
I suggest you take a peek at the "conversion" page on the development
wiki:
<http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Converting_from_other_Databases_to_PostgreSQL>
> 3. Does PostGres handle column descriptions (ie: you can give each
> column a 50 character description) and then access it via SQL Result
> Set (like I can do in Sybase)
Sure.
You can attach comments to virtually any sort of object:
<http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/sql-comment.html>
That page describes how comments can be pulled out.
> 4. Is there any Date/TimeStamp issues and conversions I need to know
> about. I use simply a DATE field and a TIME field - but do not use
> DATE/TIME stamp fields together.
TIMESTAMP and TIMESTAMPTZ are the notable "date and time" types in
Postgres. They have the fairly considerable merit over DATE + TIME that
you can do rather simpler comparisons using "full" timestamps.
Thus, you can replace stuff like:
select * from txn_table a, other_thing b
where
a.date_col > b.date_col or
(a.date_col = b.date_col and a.time_col > b.time_col)
with
select * from txn_table a, other_thing b
where a.timestamp_col > b.timestamp_col
Probably the latter is faster, but the *important* part is that it's
enormously simpler, and your developers won't be prone to make mistakes
by missing comparisons, getting them wrong, or by having the queries so
much more complex that they just don't understand them.
> 5. What UI/Developer tools (GUI) are available to manage the database
> as well as add/change columns rather than doing it via SQL commands.
There's a barrel-load of graphical tools:
<http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Community_Guide_to_PostgreSQL_GUI_Tools>
Of the "free software" tools, PGAdmin III is the one that is most
strongly maintained alongside the Postgres project, so is quite well
commendable.
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