Dave Cramer wrote:
snacktime wrote:
I'm working through the architecture design for a new product. We
have a small group working on this. It's a web app that will be using
ruby on rails. The challenge I'm running into is that the latest
conventional wisdom seems to be that since obviously databases don't
scale on the web, you should just not use them at all. I have a group
of otherwise very bright people trying to convince me that a rdbms is
not a good place to store relational data because eventually it won't
scale. And of course we don't even have version 1 of our product out
of the door. I'll admit we do have a very good chance of actually
getting tons of traffic, but my position is to use a rdbms for
relational data, and then if and when it won't scale any more, deal
with it then.
So what would really help me is some real world numbers on how
postgresql is doing in the wild under pressure. If anyone cares to
throw some out I would really appreciate it.
I missed the original post on this, so I'm replying to Dave's response.
To the OP, I don't know where you obtain your conventional wisdom
from, but I'd look for another source. Just about any site you might
visit that handles lots of data has a DBMS of some sort behind it; given
that IMS and Adabase have been out of favor for 20 years, most of those
DBMSs are relational. So if it can work for your bank, E*Trade and
eBay, chances are it can work for you.
As far as real world numbers, we have a data-intensive app (network data
collection for a telecom company) that is currently inserting about 16
million rows a day. I benchmarked PG for that app and with some
tweaking, PG could handle it. The current app uses stored procedures
for all inserts, and PG didn't do well with that approach; substituting
embedded inserts fixed that problem. So PG can definitely "handle" very
large transaction volumes. As with any DBMS and any application, you
may encounter challenges (like the one I point out with using stored
procs for high-volume inserts) that require you to address with some
thought.
--
Guy Rouillier
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