Thread: Technical question for a journalist
Hi list, No need to send out the press release :-), I was alreday grilled half an hour by a French journalist about v8. He had apparently read an interview of Marc Fournier somewhere. Anyway, the journalist had a question about tablespaces. I told him it enabled clustering on individual disks or arrays of disks. The journalist then said that this seemed like a rather basic feature and was surprised that PostgreSQL wasn't already able to do that in the previous versions. Is that indeed the case or was there another clustering mechanism before? Thanks for any clues --------------- Francois Home page: http://www.monpetitcoin.com/ "If it's not from me, it's from Confucius" - Lao Tse
> Hi list, > > No need to send out the press release :-), I was alreday > grilled half an hour by a French journalist about v8. He had > apparently read an interview of Marc Fournier somewhere. > > Anyway, the journalist had a question about tablespaces. I > told him it enabled clustering on individual disks or arrays > of disks. The journalist then said that this seemed like a > rather basic feature and was surprised that PostgreSQL wasn't > already able to do that in the previous versions. Is that > indeed the case or was there another clustering mechanism before? You could do it pre-8.0 but it required manual hacking with symlinks. Which also required you to do extra symlinks if/when yuor table grew into several files etc. And you had to shut down the server to do it. (If you wanted individual items in the same db that is. You could put entire databases on a separate disk and not nede to do the extra linking when it grew) //Magnus
On Fri, 2005-01-07 at 10:46, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> > Hi list,
> >
> > No need to send out the press release :-), I was alreday
> > grilled half an hour by a French journalist about v8. He had
> > apparently read an interview of Marc Fournier somewhere.
> >
> > Anyway, the journalist had a question about tablespaces. I
> > told him it enabled clustering on individual disks or arrays
> > of disks. The journalist then said that this seemed like a
> > rather basic feature and was surprised that PostgreSQL wasn't
> > already able to do that in the previous versions. Is that
> > indeed the case or was there another clustering mechanism before?
>
> You could do it pre-8.0 but it required manual hacking with symlinks.
> Which also required you to do extra symlinks if/when yuor table grew
> into several files etc. And you had to shut down the server to do it.
> (If you wanted individual items in the same db that is. You could put
> entire databases on a separate disk and not nede to do the extra linking
> when it grew)
>
Anyone know a list of common databases that have or don't have this
feature? I'm thinking of the main players like oracle, m$, db2, sybase,
informix, my$ql, firebird, etc...
Robert Treat
--
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL
Francois Suter m'expliquait (le 07.01.2005 16:41):
> Hi list,
>
> No need to send out the press release :-), I was alreday grilled half
> an hour by a French journalist about v8. He had apparently read an
> interview of Marc Fournier somewhere.
>
> Anyway, the journalist had a question about tablespaces. I told him it
> enabled clustering on individual disks or arrays of disks. The
> journalist then said that this seemed like a rather basic feature and
> was surprised that PostgreSQL wasn't already able to do that in the
> previous versions. Is that indeed the case or was there another
> clustering mechanism before?
>
Hi François,
I think it was(is) possible by linking (file system link) different
filenodes on different arrays/disks. This was a manual method and
difficult (or at least not possible with only the official PG utilities)
to dump/restore the spreadness of tables along the disks. This is quite
laborious to implement as you need to scriptshell this (dump/restore).
So to be clear, it was technically possible, but not included really as
a out-of-the-package (out of the box) PG feature.
That's only a heard/though of. Maybe there are other ways to do such
a thing?
--
Jean-Christophe
Robert Treat m'expliquait (le 07.01.2005 18:05): >Anyone know a list of common databases that have or don't have this >feature? I'm thinking of the main players like oracle, m$, db2, sybase, >informix, my$ql, firebird, etc... > > While googleling a little, Tablespace functionnality ================ Oracle Yes (really need an url?) Informix Yes (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/unixbr/chapter/ch14.html) DB2 Yes (http://www-306.ibm.com/software/webservers/appserv/doc/v40/ae/infocenter/was/040401010708.html) M$$ql Yes (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2000/deploy/sqlorpro.mspx) My$SQL Yes (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Multiple_tablespaces.html since InnoDB) Firebird does not seem -- Jean-Christophe
On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Francois Suter wrote: > Hi list, > > No need to send out the press release :-), I was alreday grilled half an hour > by a French journalist about v8. He had apparently read an interview of Marc > Fournier somewhere. can you find out *where*? I talked to a journalist yesterday about something she's writing for next week about something totally unrelated, and we touched a bit on the upcoming 8.0 ... but other then that, I've never talked to anyone ... *puzzled look* And that was only yesterday afternoon ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Running of on a tangent to this... > M$$ql Yes (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2000/deploy/sqlorpro.m spx) A page like this for postgresql would perhaps be a good idea? ;-) "PostgreSQL for the <other database name here> professional"... In the line of "our terminology vs their terminology" But as I'm not volounteering to write it (at least now now), I'll not say mroe than that :-) //Magnus
Marc G. Fournier wrote: > On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Francois Suter wrote: > >> Hi list, >> >> No need to send out the press release :-), I was alreday grilled half >> an hour by a French journalist about v8. He had apparently read an >> interview of Marc Fournier somewhere. > > > can you find out *where*? I talked to a journalist yesterday about > something she's writing for next week about something totally unrelated, > and we touched a bit on the upcoming 8.0 ... but other then that, I've > never talked to anyone ... *puzzled look* And that was only yesterday > afternoon ... > Eweek has your interview marc. > ---- > Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) > Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664 > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate > subscribe-nomail command to majordomo@postgresql.org so that your > message can get through to the mailing list cleanly -- Command Prompt, Inc., home of PostgreSQL Replication, and plPHP. Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting. +1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL
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Francois, > Anyway, the journalist had a question about tablespaces. I told him it > enabled clustering on individual disks or arrays of disks. The > journalist then said that this seemed like a rather basic feature and > was surprised that PostgreSQL wasn't already able to do that in the > previous versions. Is that indeed the case or was there another > clustering mechanism before? Well, there was the ad-hoc method. Mostly, it wasn't done before because there wasn't much demand for it. Tablespaces really aren't useful unless you have really large (multi-gigabyte) databases and/or large arrays with lots of disks. Three years ago, I think you could have counted the number of PG installations over 10GB on your fingers and toes. Some databases, which really don't need tablespaces from a performance perspective ... like MSSQL ... were forced to develop them because of their use of raw disk partitions to store the database. This means that you can't just move the database files when it outgrows the disk, you have to allocate a new partition. Also, our Tablespace feature is a bit more sophisticated than just dropping the tables in a new location. That part I think (correct me if I'm wrong, Gavin) was easy. The tough part was all the administrative tools and recovery stuff to make it robust; to make sure, for example, that you can restore a tablespace from backup even if the disk ceases to exist, and that transactions are robust across tablespaces. -- --Josh Josh Berkus Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco
got a URL for that? I did a search on fournier, and postgresql, and nothing in 2005 seems to be pop'ng up ... :( But, I've been known to be blind too ... On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Joshua D. Drake wrote: > Marc G. Fournier wrote: >> On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Francois Suter wrote: >> >>> Hi list, >>> >>> No need to send out the press release :-), I was alreday grilled half an >>> hour by a French journalist about v8. He had apparently read an interview >>> of Marc Fournier somewhere. >> >> >> can you find out *where*? I talked to a journalist yesterday about >> something she's writing for next week about something totally unrelated, >> and we touched a bit on the upcoming 8.0 ... but other then that, I've >> never talked to anyone ... *puzzled look* And that was only yesterday >> afternoon ... >> > > Eweek has your interview marc. > > >> ---- >> Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) >> Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664 >> >> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- >> TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate >> subscribe-nomail command to majordomo@postgresql.org so that your >> message can get through to the mailing list cleanly > > > -- > Command Prompt, Inc., home of PostgreSQL Replication, and plPHP. > Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting. > +1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com > Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL > ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>
> got a URL for that? I did a search on fournier, and postgresql, and
> nothing in 2005 seems to be pop'ng up ... :( But, I've been known to be
> blind too ...
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1748970,00.asp
--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073
On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Bruce Momjian wrote: > Marc G. Fournier wrote: >> >> got a URL for that? I did a search on fournier, and postgresql, and >> nothing in 2005 seems to be pop'ng up ... :( But, I've been known to be >> blind too ... > > http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1748970,00.asp Yeech ... and the converation she quoted me in wasn't even *about* the upcoming release, it just tangent'd over to it :( Ah well, the article wasn't *bad*, just not expected ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Marc G. Fournier wrote: > On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Bruce Momjian wrote: > > > Marc G. Fournier wrote: > >> > >> got a URL for that? I did a search on fournier, and postgresql, and > >> nothing in 2005 seems to be pop'ng up ... :( But, I've been known to be > >> blind too ... > > > > http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1748970,00.asp > > Yeech ... and the converation she quoted me in wasn't even *about* the > upcoming release, it just tangent'd over to it :( Ah well, the article > wasn't *bad*, just not expected ... > Yea, I am often surprised at the article contents after an interview, but they usually are OK none the less. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001 + If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073
Marc, > Yeech ... and the converation she quoted me in wasn't even *about* the > upcoming release, it just tangent'd over to it :( Ah well, the article > wasn't *bad*, just not expected ... Lesson #1 when talking to journalists: NOTHING is "off the record." If you talk about it, it can show up in print. I try to teach people this all the time, but even I slip up occasionally .... -- Josh Berkus Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco
On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Jean-Christophe Arnu wrote: > Robert Treat m'expliquait (le 07.01.2005 18:05): > > >Anyone know a list of common databases that have or don't have this > >feature? I'm thinking of the main players like oracle, m$, db2, sybase, > >informix, my$ql, firebird, etc... > > > > > While googleling a little, > > Tablespace functionnality > ================ > Oracle Yes (really need an url?) > Informix Yes (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/unixbr/chapter/ch14.html) > DB2 Yes > (http://www-306.ibm.com/software/webservers/appserv/doc/v40/ae/infocenter/was/040401010708.html) > M$$ql Yes > (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2000/deploy/sqlorpro.mspx) > My$SQL Yes (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Multiple_tablespaces.html I don't think MySQL's implementation is really at all like ours. It just means that there is a file per table -- you cannot determine where that file is, from memory. > Firebird does not seem Gavin