johnlicheng@xxxxxxxxx (John Cheng) writes: > Congrats on the 9.0 release of PostgreSQL. One of the features I am really > interested in is the built-in binary replication. > > Our production environment has been using PostgreSQL for more than 5 years > (since this project started). We have been using Slony-I as our replication > mechanism. I am interested to find out the pros and cons of Slony vs the > built-in replication in 9.0. Based on what I understand: > > * Slony has a higher overhead than the binary replication in 9.0 > * When using Slony, schema change must be applied via slonik (in most cases) > * Unfortunately, IMO it is easy to make a mistake when applying schema changes > in Slony, fortunately, it is easy to drop and recreate the replication sets > * Slony is an asynchronous replication mechanism > * Slony allows you to replication some tables, while ignoring others > > * PostgreSQL 9.0 with hot standby & streaming replication is an asynchronous > replication mechanism > * Overhead is low compared to Slony > > Are there some cases where it is better to use Slony, for example, when you > must specifically exclude tables from replication? I believe our system will be > better off using the built-in replication mechanism of 9.0, and I am guessing > most people will be in the same boat. There are three characteristic kinds of cases where you'll need something like Slony-I, where the built-in WAL-based replication won't work: a) You need to interact between PostgreSQL versions. Slony (and similar systems like Londiste and Bucardo) can cope with having nodes running different versions of PostgreSQL. WAL-based replication requires that all databases use *identical* versions of PostgreSQL, running on identical architectures. b) You only want to replicate parts of the changes that are going on. WAL-based replication duplicates *absolutely everything*. c) You need for there to be extra behaviours taking place on subscribers, for instance, populating cache management information. WAL-based replication duplicates *absolutely everything*, and nothing extra that changes data can run on a WAL-based replica. If you don't need any of those things, then, yes, I'd think the built-in replication is a good choice, quite likely preferable to using the trigger-based replication systems like Slony. -- output = reverse("ofni.secnanifxunil" "@" "enworbbc") "What you said you want to do is roughly equivalent to nailing horseshoes to the tires of your Buick." -- danceswithcrows@xxxxxxx on the question "Why can't Linux use Windows Drivers?" -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general