unordained wrote:

>
> Postgres isn't way ahead because it supports geographic data types -- it's ahead because they
> realized and emphasized the idea that datatypes, functions, and the languages you write them in
> should all be pluggable modules.

There's some question in my mind about whether Postgres is ahead of
us - different, certainly. More appropriate for some applications -
certainly. Less appropriate for other applications, certainly again.
Postgres started life as an object database and had SQL grafted on.
The object heritage makes their data model more flexible. Many year
ago, I worked with a system that had not data types at all ... entirely
roll-your-own. So every project started by spending four months
defining data types and operations. Very powerful, very flexible,
and made me really love C. Before we jump wildly into "everything
is pluggable" lets be sure we keep simple things simple.

Regards,


Ann