The last few PG Phriday articles have been somewhat dense content, so how about something a bit more irreverent? Rather than wax on about AI, HA architectures, or conceptual advancements to Postgres clusters, why not write a game instead? To keep things simple, let’s just build a no-frills Tamagotchi virtual pet for bored database professionals.
There’s a lot of SQL in this article, so check out the git page for this blog if you want to follow along.
Last Phriday we explored just where Postgres could end up in the future. One possible question which may have occurred to a reader was probably something along the lines of “That doesn’t even really sound like Postgres anymore. Why not just write another database?”
Let’s just be outright about it: Postgres is the best RDBMS engine currently available. It’s certainly bold to claim that any database engine is “the best”, and as the saying goes, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
One of the best features Postgres boasts is the ability to adapt. Any schmo off the street can write an extension and bolt it onto Postgres with nary a second glance. As proof, I’m going to whip one up really quick. That should be enough to convince anyone that it takes no skill at all to add functionality to Postgres.
Just so our extension actually does something, let’s start off with the instant-runoff code we wrote a few weeks ago.
Say hi to Princess Kittybutt. She’ll be our mascot (and subject) for today. We’ll get to her in a minute.
When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything becomes a nail, right? With Postgres becoming more of an environment than simply a database engine, this colloquialism is starting to resemble reality. Of course, that’s not necessarily a bad thing! As Postgres accumulates copious and varied extensions, its role as an adaptive middleware solidifies.
One way the Postgres project is subtly misleading, is that it becomes easy to forget that not all other projects are nearly as well managed. This becomes more relevant when delving into niches that lack sufficient visibility to expose the more obvious deficiencies. As much as we like Postgres, it’s not quite as popular as it could be. This makes some of the side projects infrequently used, and as a direct consequence, they can often resemble jerky automatons cobbled together out of spit and bailing wire.
