Installing PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is the commercial-quality database that I chose to use for my software. You can read why I chose it at this post (just forget anything I say there about making it compatible with many other types of databases - PostgreSQL has since become the one and only).

Installing PostgreSQL onto your computer follows exactly the same path as installing any other kind of software. Download the install file, run it. That's it.

But, if you go to their download page, you'll see all kinds of files on offer. The link I gave in the previous post, to install PostgreSQL v8.1.3, is to the file that I downloaded.

It's a zip file. Unzip that file and you get access to the installation file. Run the installation file, and it takes you through the installation wizard where you can set various options.

I used all the default options, except for the page that has Locale and Encoding options. These were the only options I changed. Locale went to Australia (because that's where I am), and the encoding was set to UTF-8.

Now, in my code where I create the Thinking Stuff database, I explicitly set the encoding to UTF-8, so you probably don't need to set it here, but I would anyway.

As well as the database software, that installation file also installs pgAdmin III, the Admin program which you may or may not want to use later on to view the data in the database. You don't need to download that separately.