I had the opportunity of working on a project converting a postgres database to a sql server based one at work. I used this opportunity to learn more of this platform and decided to write some blog posts on it. I will be focusing quite a bit on how this compares with SQL Server as I go along and hope it will be useful.
PostGreSQL is an open source based relational database – it is easy to download and install from here. I chose the version available for Windows since mine involves a comparison with SQL Server on Windows and this is easier. The install is really simple and one has to click through screens as below:
The first option is the database engine. The second, pgadmin 4, is the PostGresQL equivalent of SSMS. We can use Azure Data Studio as well but would be good to have this too to make a comparison if needed. Stack Builder is an install utility that helps with add-ons to PostGreSQL. Command Line Tools can come in very useful for many commands. So in short, it is good to have all these installed.
The second option asks for a password for SA equivalent of PostGreSQL. Be sure to record this in the password vault as there is no secondary mechanism to recover if it is lost.
The default port for PostGreSQL to listen on is 5432 so unless something else is using this port it would be best to leave it as is.
Locale is similar to collation – but is more than just that. It is a combo of preferences that are specific to country/location. There is a detailed explanation of what it includes here. I left it as default.
After this the engine will install. It would be good to reboot once the install is complete. Then, type pgadmin and the prompt will appear for you to enter the SA password created above. Once that is entered, you should see a screen with the master ‘postgres’ database as below. In the next post we can step through server settings and creating a database.
