PostgreSQL Reviews

• Free and open-source RDBMS, with a permissive license
• ACID compliance
• Multi-version concurrency control
• Custom data types
• Array data types
• PL/Python stored procedures

Back in the day, MySQL had storage problems with InnoDB (everything in a single file), and we wanted ACID compliance. So we decided to use PostgreSQL for that, and it helped us achieve that goal. PostgreSQL's feature set was excellent for our needs, and we didn't want an expensive (meaning hardware utilization) RDBMS. Fit like a glove.

There's always room for improvement. Better SELECT performance is something that PostgreSQL could really benefit from. Replication should also be made easier. PostgreSQL also lacks a good tool like MySQL Workbench. PgAdmin3 works, but it's funky and crashes sometimes.

We've been using PostgreSQL in production since version 8.4, in 2010.

I have not encountered any deployment, stability or scalability issues. It's been running since version 8.4, updating one version at a time (9.0, then 9.1 until 9.4). Database is currently at 6GB, works without a hitch.

I have never used or never needed technical support. StackOverflow covered all our needs on this scenario.

Up to that point, we used MySQL. The decision to change came with a new version being written from scratch, and PostgreSQL being better suited for our needs.

The initial setup was somewhat complex. We had to import the old database, which was in MySQL. Most tables were rewritten, and the team was not used to PostgreSQL at that time, so there was a small cultural impact.

Implementation was completely in-house. On our case, it was much better to train the team to use a new RDBMS than to use external consultant; after all, our team is a development team.

Since it's completely free, the ROI means only the time spent by the team to get the database up and running, and the time maintaining it. I'd say it doesn't compare with any other solution I've worked with before.

PostgreSQL has extensive and comprehensive documentation. Chances are that you'll find your answers there for 99% of the cases. For those answers you don't find, you can always go to StackOverflow. If you're not a DBA or a programmer, I'd suggest hiring external help, as with all the cases with databases (RDBMS or not).

Strong enforcement of data types, because it can catch many errors and mistakes and protects data. Standard conformance, because in the end you are not locked to single vendor.

We used MySQL for many tasks, because there were simply more documentation available, but while using it, we found many serious weaknesses with it like no data validation even for string length, no transactions, etc. PostgreSQL catches a lot of things that MySQL didn't because it is serious about the data it protects!

It needs more parallelism for big tables. This is already in PostgreSQL 9.6 beta so things are looking promising.

We've been using it in production since 1999.

We have had no major issues with the deployment, but tweaking does need to be done.

There have been no performance issues.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

Excellent mailing lists with active developers. Once I sent them my query which was about slow performance due to double sorting (group by, order by), and the fix for it went into PostgreSQL 7.4, because Tom Lane noticed that in such cases PostgreSQL should not do two sorts. So after upgrading to 7.4 things got way faster without touching the code at all.

We previously used MySQL. PostgreSQL tries to solve things in the correct way for all platforms, all file systems, and all users. In the end, this means you get a better working and more stable system. They try to stay away from hacks and other non-portable or limited solutions and prefer to work inside the system. For example, an operating system already does many optimizations so why would one want to reinvent things with raw file systems, etc. like Oracle tried to do in the past?

Defaults for PostgreSQL are very low. In almost all situations one has to do some tweaking to make it perform better. It does not take much time to do it at first, but has to be done!

I did it myself with help from the internet. For beginners, I would advise you to read the documentation that is available. Also, you should read some books such as "PostgreSQL: Up and Running, 2nd Edition". "PostgreSQL Administration Essentials", "PostgreSQL 9 Administration Cookbook, 2nd Edition". Alternatively, you could look into getting professional help if you are in hurry.

Explore this new world. PostgreSQL has taken a quantum leap over the last 20 years, and now it seriously threatens more established database vendors.

This solution is very good and efficient in joining big tables. It also provides a lot of options that, from a developer's point of view, can be utilized in a project. 

In the next release, I would like to see better integration with other platforms.

I've been using this solution for about three and a half years.

This solution is stable - I'm not aware of any performance issues.

This is a scalable solution.

The initial setup is simple - you are only required to download the installation files, which takes just a few minutes.

I would rate this solution as seven out of ten.

We use PostgreSQL as a database for our ERP system.

There are several features I would like to improve that aren't working as expected. It's likely that the latest version is doing something that was missed in the previous versions. For example, the output parameters — the stored procedures — is something new in PostgreSQL that Firebird has already had for a long time. We haven't tried the latest version, but they're supposed to add some of the most important things.

I've been using PostgreSQL for nearly 20 years.

PostgreSQL is stable. It's available, stable, and reliable.

Installing PostgreSQL is not so easy, and the installation takes about one day.

I rate PostgreSQL eight out of 10. I would definitely recommend it.

The solution is quite a good database for light applications for sure. This is how we are using it - as a front-end application and the canned database of PostgreSQL. The use case is comparable to Oracle, with quite a wide range of usage.

It's easy to install in Oracle and it's quite good to use for the canned database for content applications.

The solution is quite a good database.

Their pricing is very good.

The solution is very easy to use.

It's quite scalable.

The stability is good.

The installation is simple. 

I don't work with the solution often enough to really know if there are any missing elements. For me, for how I use it, it works fine.

We're only really using two to five percent of the functionality available.

While there's no perfect solution, we aren't using too much of the functionality to really be able to comment on what might be missing.

If it was free to use, it would be the perfect solution.

We're currently using the solution. We've used it at least over the past year.

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

The scalability is very good. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so with ease.

We have around 2,000 people using the solution currently. It might even be a bit more.

We also use Oracle Database. I would say the two are quite comparable.

The installation is not overly complex. You just install it and start using it. It's simple. We are using AWS for both instances so it's simple and easy. That said, I was not personally involved in the installation process.

How many people you require for the implementation depends on the implementation itself. It can be one person or it can be five. It's difficult to say. In our case, we have only one person looking after all instances.

It's not an expensive solution.

I can't recall the exact version number of the solution. We're planning to move to the latest version.

The solution is installed in the cloud, however, it's a software as a service, provided by AWS.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. It's very comparable to Oracle.

While it does depend on the use case, for the most part, I would recommend the solution to other companies and users.

The solution is primarily used to develop the databases for your application. I used it personally for a college assignment.

The solution is open-source and therefore free to use.

You can do the same actions as you can with the SQL Server.

It's a standard reliable database management system.

The solution comes with an option to work in dark mode, which I appreciate.

The interface could be much better. Maybe it took a little bit longer to understand the menu options and so on. On top of that, it's a web interface. It makes it uninteresting to look at. It's not so appealing as the options that Microsoft offers. It's a separate program that works separately and you don't mess with the browser. It works okay, you can do what you need to do, however, it's not, in my opinion, so professional-looking. That said, it's open-source so I can understand that they prefer to do it like that.

The installation process could be better organized.

The stability could be better. they release new versions all the time and they aren't quite as stable as we'd like them to be.

We've only used the solution for a few months. We used it for two projects. It was basically used across two semesters. We have used it in the past year.

The solution is not as stable in comparison to Microsoft SQL Server. I had some issues with a version, and I had to re-install it last year. Now, however, it's working fine. That said, they are always launching new updates and they seem to release them too early as they are not so stable.

I'm not sure if I will continue to use the solution. I used it for an assignment, and that's it. 

I did not contact technical support. I've never reached out to them directly. Therefore, I can't speak to how helpful or responsive they are.

I've also worked with Microsoft SQL, and I find the product to be much more stable.

The initial setup could be a bit better. They have some improvements to do especially with regards to the additional tools they propose. That part is just a little bit messy. Other than that, I thought it was very easy to install it. It's not overly complex.

I was able to handle the implementation myself. I did not need the help of a consultant or integrator. 

The solution doesn't cost anything to use. It's open-source.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. I'm mostly happy with its capabilities.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend this product for beginners. 

We use it as an intermediary database for the collection of a variety of data points out of our data systems.

There are many departments that have different data, single points of truth. We asked them to give us different datasets, and we accumulated them in our Postgres-stored database.

It's an intermediary for a machine learning model.

I am more of a fan of doing things straight out of Python, but with the size of the data sets, we were forced to do it in SQL.

What I like is that it's quite powerful in terms of performance.

Part of the reason we use this solution is because of its simplicity and because it works. It does all of the basic things it's supposed to do and it's not anything fancy.

They are fulfilling their customer's needs. 

I had some issues when I integrated with the Jupyter Notebook. 

In the system administration, if you open the connection to the database with a notebook, there is no automatic closing of this connection. 

I would like to see seamless integration with other tools such as Jupyter Notebook. We use it with Anaconda.

Also, possibly more streamline integration with more programming languages. An API for some different languages such as MARGO and JavaScript could be interesting.

I have been using PostgreSQL for one year.

I had an issue where we couldn't find the fault, and it happened on occasion at the end of the day. Some of my basic queries would stop running. 

I had some queries run for two days and some run for a day, then I would have to try it again the next day and it would complete in 20 seconds. Sometimes, it seemed to catch itself.

I haven't had any contact with technical support from PostgresSQL. I do my research using Google.

I did not initialize this database, but from what I understand it's very basic. It was simple to do.

I would prefer programming languages to query languages. Scripting, for instance.

If you have a relational database then you want to use PostgresSQL. I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it.

It's suitable for everything we use. There was nothing exceptional from my perspective, but it did everything we needed it to do.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

• Very good indexing solutions, especially for arrays and text search on large quantities.
• Very good behavior on large databases (>800GB) and large tables.
• Datatypes - support for vectors, XML, JSON, UUID and the functions and operators for them are very useful.
• Programming languages - I deeply appreciate the extensibility of the server to allow more than one language for scripting functions. We mostly use PL/SQL, but recently I've tried PL/v8 and was astonishing to see that it works.
• Execute with Query Parameters is a big plus for us as there are no type conversions needed to run dynamic queries reducing the run time by approximately 25%
• There is a huge amount of community interest in developing and supporting the product.

All of our BI needs are implemented using PostgreSQL functions. Our tools are designed in such a way that the BI is implemented as much as possible through our database. We need a lot of flexibility to extend the BI logic on a specific installation.

Synchronous replication is needed, and although I have only searched the web for a couple of hours the only solutions I could find were at the application level of the database.

XML and JSON manipulation functions need to be improved as for some applications we need to add new elements to these "structures". To do this with JSON I currently use a PL/v8 extension.

We have had no issues with the deployment.

There have been no performance issues.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

Try it out! Sometimes, due to the high degree of configurability and extensibility, you might see some issues arise, but it's not that difficult to figure out what's happening. You will definitely be amazed by the SQL features and extensibility.