Re: (-) Sorry, your distribution type is unsupported.

[Warren Young <tangent cyberport com>]

"Bruce W. Bigby" wrote:
> 
> I'm curious about this Berkely DB.  How does it differ from databases,
> such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Oracle.  Also, does RedHat 7.0 ship with
> PostgreSQL?  Why doesn't RedHat uses PostgreSQL?

Berkeley DB is a different kind of database from all the ones you
mention.  It's a library you link to your programs, to store data in
local files.  MySQL and stuff like that are _database servers_.  They're
networked, and they run as separate processes.  If RPM were based on a
database server they'd have to ensure:

	1. That the machine has some kind of networking, at least local
loopback.

	2. That the database server is always running, at least whenever you
wanted to install, query or remove packages.

This would mean that during the OS installation, that Postgres would
have to be somehow installed and started in the background, then the
installation could continue.

Berkeley DB, on the other hand, is a library that they can statically
link to the rpm binary, so there is no separate program to start up, no
network required to communicate with it, no separate requirements to
make things work.

This is a very sane design choice.
-- 
= Warren -- ICBM Address: 36.8274040 N, 108.0204086 W, alt. 1714m