Re: Any Plans for cross database queries on the same server? - Mailing list pgsql-general

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 04:43:14PM -0800, Richard Troy wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Jan 2007, Mark Walker wrote:
> >
> > I don't know.  My customers expect 24/7 reliability.  They expect
> > to be able to access their info anywhere in the world over a
> > variety of different devices.  I can remember times when people
> > would just go home because computer networks were down.  I haven't
> > seen that happen in a long time.
>
> ...Back in 1986, Cheryl Healy and I took on running Polaroid's
> corporate systems "24 X 7" - and we worked hard to make it "24 X 7 X
> 365.24".  Shortly thereafter - while still working with Cheryl,
> Angel Vila, Chris Boerner and I took on running Bellcore's 800
> telephone network full time also - our success was measured how few
> minutes/seconds there was any lost business at all on an annual
> basis. (Bellcore was previously known as AT&T Bell Laboratories.) If
> you made an 800 number based call from '86 to '89, the systems I
> managed for Bellcore helped place that call. ... I could go on. I've
> worked in the "always up"  community a long time now and have worked
> with/for more corporations in this capacity than nearly anyone you
> might find - mostly very large, well known companies.
>
> My observation is that we have a real shortage of quality operating
> systems today, and what few exist/remain don't enjoy much market
> share because they're not based on Unix, so they're largely missing
> out on the Open Source activity. What may be worse, young people who
> don't know any better are sometimes told/taught not to bother with
> anything over five years old as it's antiquated so they don't ever
> find out that things could be better - and once were. (Example,
> anyone who thinks "man pages" are great has obviously got a very
> limited experience from which to base their opinion!) ... As a
> practical matter today we mostly have a choice of Windows or some
> flavor of unix, neither of which are great. That would be very
> different in my opinion if only Unix didn't have this asenine view
> that the choice between a memory management strategy that kills
> random processes and turning that off and accepting that your system
> hangs is a reasonable choice and that spending a measily % of
> performance in overhead to eliminate the problem is out of the
> question. Asenine, I tell you.

The OOM killer in Linux is, indeed, asinine.  You can shut it off,
though, and systems administrators worth their salt know this and do
it as a matter of routine.  If you have some strategy that doesn't
involve those hangs as a consequence, I'm sure you can get an audience
from the Linux kernel people and/or the FreeBSD ones.

> Meanwhile, what Operating Systems ARE _today_ reliable choices upon
> which to run your Postgres datababse engine?
>
> ...BTW, McDonalds in Paris?! -smile- Just make sure you order
> Freedom Fries!

McDonalds in Paris is good for one thing and one thing only: their
free public toilets. :)

Cheers,
D (and even the French understand that fries are actually from Belgium ;)
--
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
phone: +1 415 235 3778        AIM: dfetter666
                              Skype: davidfetter

Remember to vote!