Postgres is the well known and most used Open Source OLTP database available today. EnterpriseDB sits atop Postgres and leverages it to provide enterprise capabilities to Postgres users. EnterpriseDB is available for Windows platform as well. It has most of the necessary features of an enterprise class such as advanced development, monitoring, migration and administrative tools with a stable environment. It also has plug-in capabilities for Oracle. In the present form EnterpriseDB claims cost effectiveness versus Oracle and better scalability than MySQL. It can easily integrate with most applications such as Java, Ajax, Ruby, Drupal etc. This article by Dr. Jayaram Krishnaswamy mainly describes the installation of EnterpriseDB and the basic features to get started on this important database product.

Installing the EnterpriseDB

Download PostgrePlus Advanced Server 8.3 ( pgplus-advsvr-windows-83012b.exe (120MB) ) from the following site: http://www.enterprisedb.com/products/download.do. After downloading the program double click the executable file. You may need to choose a language from a list of languages. Here English has been chosen. The welcome window gets displayed as shown. Click Next.

Choose the option you need. Read notes on this page to make the choice. Here, the Oracle compatibility has been chosen.

Click Next or, choose a different location by browsing. Here the default location is accepted.

Click Next. The window that shows up displays all the various features that are available. Pick and choose the features. Here all features are chosen.

Click Next. The next window shows the links from where the JDBC drivers for connecting to Oracle and MySQL are available displayed. Click Next .

In the window that shows up you need to choose the password for the Operating System UserID and Password. Read the cautionary remarks on this page. Choose Next. At this point your anti-virus program may require you to permit to run the program.

McAfee is the anti-virus program on this computer.

In the window that gets displayed you may need to choose the administrator's log in credentials. You may also Browse and select the Data Destination Directory. Herein the default is accepted. Click Next.

In the windows that gets displayed you may choose the type of environment for which the server will be used as well as the work load for which you may be using the server. The dynamic tuning options available are:

Server Utilization
• Development: This is a development machine and many other applications will be running on it. Stress testing should not be performed with this configuration. EnterpriseDB will use a minimal amount of memory.
• Mixed: Several applications will be running on this machine. Choose this option for web/application servers.
• Dedicated: This machine is dedicated to run EnterpriseDB and will use available memory to optimize performance.

The Workload Profile
• Transaction Processing: The running application is a transaction intensive applications.
• General Purpose: The database will be used for transaction processing as well as complex queries and reporting.
• Reporting: The database will be used for reporting applications.

For this tutorial, the Mixed option for Server Utilization and General Purpose for Workload Profile were chosen.

Click on Next. The Summary page gets displayed showing all the options chosen.

Click on the Install button. The window with a progress bar gets displayed.

You may get a warning from the anti-virus program on your computer to allow the file to be executed.

Click OK to allow install.

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When you click on Next you will see a window where you can get updates as well as some information on the size of files and their versions.

When you click on  Download & Apply you need to provide the authentication information as displayed in the next page. You need to access your Email to complete the information for the updates by clicking on the link provided.

Click on Next. In the window that shows up you can get updates. Updates need stopping of the server. You must accept this for the upgrade to proceed.

This window shows the completion of the upgrade and the location of the upgrade information.

When you click Finish you will see this thank you note from EnterpriseDB.

Program shortcuts on the desktop

After a successful install you should be seeing the following when you access Start | All Programs | Postgres Plus Advanced Server 8.3 as shown.

You get a rich set of tools to work with this database. You have the ability to stop/start the database from here as well as from Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Services. The Postgres Studio is a nice GUI for managing objects which can be invoked from here. More on these later.

Postgres Plus windows services

When you access Start | All Programs | Administrative Tools | Services and open the Services window you get the following services displayed. Note each of the 'Log On As' items of the services and they can be configured in this window.

Postgres Studio

You can open the Postgres Studio from Start | All Programs | Postgres Plus Advanced Server 8.3 | Postgres Studio. You need to provide the authentication to connect to the Server as shown here.

If you opt to store the password then you will be given the following instruction. Here the "Store password" option was not chosen. Read the consequences of storing the password.

After you are connected you can click on the Advanced Server 8.3 node to expand and access other objects as shown in the next figure. Out of the box, after the installation, there is only one database, mgmtsvr - Management Server Backend database. The databases PGNorthwind and postgres were created later.

Summary

The tutorial described the installation of EnterpriseDB which is built on top of Postgres on a Windows XP Professional computer. Some of the basic features such as Windows Services, Program shortcuts, Postgres Studio were described. Future articles will cover managing databases with the Postgres Studio; Migration from / to other vendor products ; database connectivity with applications; integration with other open source applications, etc.

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About the Author

Dr. Jay Krishnaswamy is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore writes on database and web development related topics to several computer programming related web sites. He is an active participant in several forums and discussion groups. Before working in the IT industry as a Microsoft Certified Trainer and a Siebel Certified consultant he taught at several institutes of technology and universities in India, Australia, Brazil and the USA. Links to his articles may be found at his web site or the blog. He lives in Plainsboro, NJ, USA and may be reached at jkrishnaswamy@comcast.net