PostgreSQL: Up and Running, 3rd Edition

Appendix A. Installing PostgreSQL

Windows and Desktop Linux

EnterpriseDB builds installers for Windows and desktop versions of Linux. They offer both 32-bit and 64-bit versions for each OS.

The installers are easy to use. They come packaged with PgAdmin (PostgreSQL 9.6+ come with pgAdmin4 while older versions come with pgAdmin3) and a stack builder from which you can install add-ons like JDBC, .NET drivers, Ruby, PostGIS, phpPgAdmin, and pgAgent.

EnterpriseDB has two PostgreSQL offerings: the official, open source edition of PostgreSQL, dubbed the Community Edition; and its proprietary edition, called Advanced Plus. The proprietary fork offers Oracle compatibility and enhanced management features. Don’t get confused between the two when you download installers. In this book, we focused on the official PostgreSQL, not Postgres Plus Advanced Server; however, much of the material applies to Postgres Plus Advanced Server.

BigSQL is an open source PostgreSQL distribution, largely funded by the company OpenSCG. The BigSQL distribution is similar to EnterpriseDB and has installers for 64-bit versions of Windows, Mac, and Linux.

It is newer than the EnterpriseDB distribution and targets interoperability, DevOps, and Big Data. As such, it includes extensions you wouldn’t commonly find in other distributions. It is packaged with pgTSQL, a procedural language that emulates Microsoft SQL Server’s Transact-SQL stored procedure language, and lots of goodies for benchmarking and monitoring like pgBadger. ...