PostgreSQL is a complex software project,
and managing it is difficult. We have found that many
enhancements to PostgreSQL can be more
efficiently developed separately from the core project. Separate
projects can
have their own developer teams, email lists, bug tracking,
and release schedules. While their independence makes
development easier, it makes users' jobs harder. They have to hunt
around looking for database enhancements to meet their needs.
This section describes some of the more popular externally
developed enhancements and guides you on how to find them.
Many PostgreSQL-related projects are
hosted at either
GBorg
or pgFoundry.
There are other PostgreSQL-related projects that are hosted
elsewhere, but you will have to do an Internet search to find them.
PostgreSQL includes very few interfaces
with the base distribution. libpq is packaged because
it is the primary C interface and many other
interfaces are built on top of it. ecpg is packaged
because it is tied to the server-side grammar so is very dependent
on the database version. All the other interfaces are independent
projects and must be installed separately.
Some of the more popular interfaces are:
psqlODBC
This is the most common interface for Windows
applications.
pgjdbc
A JDBC interface.
Npgsql
.Net interface for more recent
Windows applications.