Which Development Environment/Tools For FreeBSD + PostgreSQL Service?

Greg 'groggy' Lehey grog at FreeBSD.org
Wed Sep 29 17:36:32 PDT 2004


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Single line paragraphs.

On Wednesday, 29 September 2004 at 17:52:28 +1000, tom_oak at telstra.com wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> We are a company looking for a good development environment/tool(s)
> for a service-type application. The OS is FreeBSD and the database
> will be PostgreSQL. The first emphasis is placed on reliability, with
> secondary emphasis on performance. Third in importance would be the
> richness of the language/features and avoidance of "plumbing" code.
>
> - Is this the right place to be asking about development tools?

Yes.

> - C/C++ comes to mind, but which flavour of compiler/debugger/third
> party add-ons/editor?

Until proof of the contrary (which I think would be difficult), why
not stick with the tools supplied with the system?

> An advantage here is the fact that this language is well established
> which should improve reliability to some extent (if we are careful
> with pointers). A disadvantage would be the extensive use of
> pointers, the cryptic and unreadable look of the code and the fact
> that C/C++ is getting a bit long in the tooth.

I've noted in the past that C has actually proven more robust than C++
in this matter; I don't think the age is as important as the utility
of the language.  I haven't seen *any* newer compiled language which
works as well.

> - We are considering the Borland tools (JBuilder/Kylix) since we are
> familiar with Borland tools and like their database connectivity,
> rich components and elegant looking code (less plumbing). But on the
> other hand, we don't need any GUI, and we had some problems in the
> past with reliability. Do you have any thoughts on this?

I don't know the tools.  I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't
interoperate as well with the FreeBSD environment.

> - We would prefer not to use ODBC/JDBC, and instead interface
> directly to the database. We had some bad experience in the past
> regarding reliability and performance. We can either use the library
> provided by Postgres or write our own wrappers to make things more
> readable.

A priori, my take on this is to use the tools provided (Postgres
library interface, in this case) until proof of the contrary.

> - We would prefer not to use an interpreted language such as Python,
> Java, and Perl etc for performance reasons. We know that Java can be
> compiled, but is it a good solution without using JDBC? How about
> reliability?

I'd stick with C.

AUUG (the Australian UNIX User Group) will be doing a symposium on
development techniques in Adelaide next year, probably March or
April.  It sounds like this would be a good thing for you to attend.

Greg
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