PostgreSQL Databases
PostgreSQL is an open source database management system. It is an object-relational database management system, otherwise known as ORDBMS. It is free software that has been released under the open source BSD license. This gives an entire community the opportunity to build, improve and expand upon PostgreSQL as no one company owns the software.
PostgreSQL has been around for 15 years and is one of the most well respected and widely used database systems on the UNIX platform along with the possibly better known MySQL. These two database management systems together form the wide majority of database platforms used on UNIX and Linux systems.
PostgreSQL is available to you through your web host if your host has allowed it. If you are using a web host with cPanel then you can access PostgreSQL under the databases section in your cPanel account. From here you can create, delete and control your PostgreSQL databases.
PostgreSQL as an unlimited maximum database size so there are no limitations. The maximum table size is 32TB which is more than the majority of needs. They allow a row size maximum of 1.6TB and a max field size of 1GB. PostgreSQL allows unlimited rows per table and up to 1600 columns per table depending on the column type.
Award winning PostgreSQL Databases
PostgreSQL has won several awards including The Linux Journal Editors' Choice Award for best DBMS five times and the Linux New Media Award for Best Database System. PostgreSQL runs on all operating systems so is not confined just to Linux. It will also run on Windows and Max OS X amongst others.
The programming interfaces for PostgreSQL are native and include C/C++, Java, .Net, Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl, ODBC and others. This makes PostgreSQL a highly practical and flexible database management system.
Data integrity is a big deal when it comes to databases as it keeps security intact and helps to avoid errors. PostgreSQL comes with many data integrity features including compound primary keys, check constraints, unique constraints, not null constraints and foreign keys with restricting and cascading updates and deletes.
If you are writing an application from scratch to use on your web host then PostgreSQL is an excellent choice as your database management system. It is secure, flexible and best of all has a large community of developers willing to help out for free if you ever get stuck or have problems.