On Tue, 2006-03-28 at 15:15 -0600, Scott Marlowe wrote: > On Tue, 2006-03-28 at 13:51, Rafael Martinez wrote: > > On Tue, 2006-03-28 at 12:09 -0600, Jim C. Nasby wrote: > > > > > > > > Fortunately, you can use Slony to migrate between versions, greatly > > > reducing downtime. > > > > Yes, this is true, but the problem is that if the database is 'big' and > > running in an expensive system you need to double your investment only > > for the upgrade. > > > > I am sure we can find another way of doing this that is easier and > > faster. > > Any large, production system should already have replication in place. > > If not, you're taking your chances with that big system that make any > investment questionable. If downtime is a real problem. You do not need replication in place to run a large system in a responsible way. I agree that you need redundance in many layers but you have to stop at some point. We have for example, some big/expensive disk arrays in our system that have a lot of redundancy, redundant hot plug power supplies, redundant hot plug blowers, redundant hot plug cache batteries, redundant hot plug FC I/O modules, redundant pair of controllers, etc, etc and an expensive 24x7 onsite hardware support. But we do not have an extra disk array just in case the one in production stops working (it can happen but we have to trust it won't) Fast scsi disks in this type of array are not cheap, and the bosses are not happy if you say that you need the double of space to upgrade the system, this can be very expensive in a big system. I work with postgresql every day and I am very happy with it, but this does not mean I can not see the issues that could be improve to have a even better open source DBMS. And I think in my humble opinion that bloated indexes + better upgrade procedures between major releases are two things that should get improved in the future. regards, -- Rafael Martinez, <r.m.guerrero@xxxxxxxxxxx> Center for Information Technology Services University of Oslo, Norway PGP Public Key: http://folk.uio.no/rafael/
