About the PSQL Database Editions
This section provides some basic information about the PSQL Server and Workgroup editions. For a discussion of PSQL architecture, see The PSQL Component Architecture in Advanced Operations Guide.
PSQL Server and Vx Server
PSQL Server and Vx Server are designed to support up to many hundreds of concurrent network users when installed on the required hardware. They are capable of supporting Web, corporate, departmental, and other client/server or web-based applications where reliability and performance are critical.
PSQL Server and Vx Server differ in that Vx Server supports capacity-based licenses for service bureau, software-as-a-service, or other multiplexed environments, while PSQL Server supports licenses for end-user client/server applications. No additional license is required for use with hypervisor features such as live migration, failover, fault tolerance (FT), high availability (HA), and disaster recovery.
PSQL Workgroup
PSQL Workgroup is designed to support single-user or small workgroup installations.
PSQL Workgroup offers the same level of reliability and features as the Server engine. The only differences lie in networking and performance in mid- and large-size environments.
PSQL Workgroup offers a flexible approach to accessing data on remote servers, allowing a variety of small network configurations. If you have data files on a remote file system with no database engine present, you can configure PSQL Workgroup so that a particular engine is always used to access the remote data, or you can set it up so that the first engine to access the files then “serves” those files until there are no more requests for data. After this point, again the first engine to access the files then owns the files while requests are coming in.
A PSQL engine cannot be installed on more than one machine. Your user count license refers to the number of client connections allowed to that engine, not to the number of machines to which you are allowed to install the PSQL engine. In a Workgroup environment, every machine that will access PSQL data should have a Workgroup engine installed.
Feature Comparison
All PSQL database engines offer the same powerful feature set and full-functioned support for programming interfaces. The chart below shows the major differences between the different editions of the product.
Table 1
Comparison of Server and Workgroup Features
Feature
Server
Workgroup
Supports a variety of access methods (see PSQL SDK)
* 
* 
Full-featured relational support (online backup, security, referential integrity, management tools, and so on)
* 
* 
Binary compatible data files across all platforms and engine editions
* 
* 
Easy plug and play upgrading, no application changes required to change engines.
* 
* 
Includes complete online documentation
* 
* 
Can access data on a file server where no database engine is installed
 
* 
Supports remote ODBC client connections
* 
* 
Requires a Workgroup engine on all computers expected to access remote data
does not apply
* 
Engine runs on Windows
* 
* 
Engine runs on Linux
* 
 
Multi-user for small groups
* 
* 
Scales to thousands of users
* 
 
Extranet license available
* 
 
Enforces Operating System Security
*