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Babelfish for PostgreSQL extends your PostgreSQL database with the ability to accept database connections from Microsoft SQL Server clients. Doing this allows applications originally built for SQL Server to work directly with PostgreSQL with few code changes compared to a traditional migration and without changing database drivers. For more information about migrating, see migrating to Babelfish.

Babelfish provides an additional endpoint for a PostgreSQL database cluster that allows it to understand the SQL Server wire-level protocol and commonly used SQL Server statements. This approach allows client applications that use the Tabular Data Stream (TDS) wire protocol to connect natively to the TDS listener port on PostgreSQL. Babelfish supports TDS versions 7.1 and higher. For more information on the SQL Server wire-level protocol, see [MS-TDS]: Tabular Data Stream Protocol on the Microsoft website.

You can access your data simultaneously using a Babelfish TDS connection from one application and a native PostgreSQL connection from another application. You can customize the ports used for client connections when you initialize Babelfish, or later by setting PostgreSQL parameters. For more information about the parameters that control Babelfish, see configuring Babelfish.

By default, to use the following dialects use the following ports:

  • SQL Server dialect, clients connect to port 1433.

  • PostgreSQL dialect, clients connect to port 5432.

Babelfish runs the Transact-SQL (T-SQL) language with the exceptions documented in T-SQL limitations.

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