PostgreSQL on the Mac

Having recently discussed running MySQL on the Mac I’d now like to tackle PostgreSQL. I’m sorry to say things are not quite as rosy just yet. PostgreSQL don’t provide us with a binary distribution for the Mac nor do they provide a nice Panel for the System Preferences App. There are also less choices when it comes to GUIs for manipulating and designing your database but there are still options and things are still a lot better than they could be.

Binary Distributions

There are a few alternatives for binary distributions but so far the only one I’ve found that actually works is the one by Marc Liyanage which is also very up to date and also a Universal Binary. There is a little more to the install than just clicking next but not much so it’s a great option. You can get the installer and the instructions here: www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/postgresql/

GUIs

So far I have only found one descent PostgreSQL GUI for the Mac and although it does everything you need it is not perfect. You really need to know PostgreSQL well enough to do it all from the command-line to get far with this GUI and the interface is a bit clunky really but it works and it’s stable which is worth a lot. However, if you know what you’re doing it will save you a lot of time and come in very very handy. Anyhow, I’m talking about PGAdmin and you can get it here: www.pgadmin.org

Conclusions

Although things are not yet as far along with PostgreSQL on the Mac as they are with MySQL or indeed PostgreSQL on other platforms things are not that bad. You can install it in a few minutes and you can get a descent GUI, that really does cover the essentials in my book. BTW, if you’re a MySQL head and are thinking of switching to PostgreSQL have a look at my post on switching from MySQL to PostgreSQL.