Postgres vs. MSSQL

[Gabriel Gunderson]

On Wed, 2006-11-08 at 10:49 -0700, Michael L Torrie wrote:
> I have a friend (famous last words I know) who does large-scale
> database programming for a living and tells me MS SQL is based on the
> old Sybase engine, which has serious locking issues.  He claims to
> have code that can, with just a few concurrent queries, bring MS SQL,
> Sybase, and even DB2 to their knees.  (MySQL too, obviously.).  The
> only databases that can handle some of their stuff are Oracle and
> PostgreSQL. Bear in mind I'm not talking about the the granularity of
> the lock (MySQL's locking is much finer now than it used to be) but
> rather the techniques used to enforce data integrity.  If I recall
> correctly, PostgreSQL and Oracle do not use locks at all to enforce
> integrity. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can explain to me why this
> might be.

It's called MVCC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postgresql#MVCC

Gabe