On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 2:30 PM, Andreas Joseph Krogh
<andreak@officenet.no> wrote:
> No, PG has never, and will never, act as an application-server.
Why in the world not? Now, it may or may not be a good idea but there
is no technical constraint that prevents postgresql from being used in
this fashion. I think it's a fine idea.
Postgresql has certain features, in particular being able to implement
functions in any language, that make it uniquely well suited among its
peers to act as a application server platform. Having a
quasi-functional front end to your middeware procedural code is very
powerful as is having direct access to a local data store for caching
and spooling purposes. So powerful that I would argue that if
properly supported by tools it would be superior to many of the more
classic stacks in use today. I could go down the list of reasons why
that's the case -- tight coupling with data, performance, emphasis on
transactional coding, etc. There are downsides too, but those could
be mitigated with some thought and work.
Postgres is not just a database -- it's a language hosting platform if
you want to use it as such. Now, you can continue to do things as
you've always done (database 'here', code 'here', web server 'here'),
but why discourage people from trying out different things?
merlin