From the official PostgreSQL docs, “PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source object-relational database system that uses and extends the SQL language combined with many features that safely store and scale the most complicated data workloads”. Now that we know the background of PostgreSQL, let’s go over what it is. To summarize, PostgreSQL is derived from the POSTGRES project so while the names are often used interchangeably, PostgreSQL is the official name with Postgres its nickname. Officially, the pronunciation is “Post-Gres-Q-L”, however most still use “Postgres” when speaking of PostgreSQL whether because of tradition and/or due to its easier pronunciation.
In fact, since PostgreSQL’s pronunciation isn’t very clear, a huge debate rose on whether or not to switch back to Postgres (check out the wiki).
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As a result, PostgreSQL became the new official name to emphasize the relationship between the original POSTGRES and the recent with SQL capability.Īn unexpected side effect of the name choice was the confusion on how to pronounce it. However, by 1996 the name “Postgres95” was outdated. They released it to the web under a new name, Postgres95, where it became known as the open-source descendant of the original POSTGRES Berkeley code. Of course this wasn’t the end of PostgreSQL! In 1994, Andrew Yu and Jolly Chen built on top of the POSTGRES project by adding an SQL language interpreter. As a result, the Berkeley POSTGRES project officially ended that year with Version 4.2. With this growth, the maintenance and support of the project became too much for the Berkeley team to handle.
In its early years it had a lot of breakthrough major releases, until 1993 where its external user community nearly doubled. The beginnings of PostgreSQL can be traced back to 1986 where the POSTGRES project was led by Professor Michael Stonebraker at the University of California at Berkeley. In fact, PostgreSQL is derived from Postgres. The answer is that though they are not separate, they are not the same thing. Often you’ll see PostgreSQL and Postgres being used and honestly, at first I was confused if they were two separate things or the same thing. To understand PostgreSQL I have split this section into three parts: “ History of PostgreSQL”, “ Definition of PostgreSQL”, and “ How PostgreSQL is different from SQL”.