Of course the wording might signify that it might take until 9.3/10.0 for this to happen, but I’ll keep my hopes up. 9.2 should be out in October so maybe next spring around the Dev Summit we’ll be on PostgreSQL? Dominic Stubbins actually read the UC Q&A ESRI posted about the pre-conference survey (I admit it, I didn’t feel like reading it) and found something very interesting.
I discovered this little gem in the Q and A section that seems to have been overlooked in all the Server discussion. It seems that ESRI will be supporting an open source DBMS in the form of PostGreSQL, this support is currently in testing and due for release sometime after the initial 9.2 release. You can read about it at the Q&A section under the Geodatabase and ArcSDE section (Q11).
Yep, there it is. I usually ask this question every year, but this year I didn’t for some reason and maybe that is all it took. Back at the Dev Summit, I asked this question to the ArcSDE devs and they said there were no plans (I assume they lied through their teeth since other folks at ESRI had already confirmed to me what the Q&A states back in Jan/Feb. Now that the cat is out of the bag, we can now start bugging the ArcSDE folks about PostgreSQL support at the UC. I’m very happy about this as the cost of implementing SDE has gone down exponentially. Any bets who will be the first person to ask where is MySQL support? (Hobu?)