Thread: RE: [NOVICE] Re: [GENERAL] Re: Is PostgreSQL ready for mission cr iticalapplications?

All I can do is offer my own testimonial:

I'm using postgreSQL 6.5.x on 3 different RedHat Linux Intel systems.  All
have been working fine to my inexperienced eye.  I'm running small databases
on all of them.  The most complex has about 25 tables with maybe 250 - 300
fields total.  I'm using MS Access with ODBC for most of the work.  Some I'm
doing using the perl Pg library and I'm writing cgi scripts to generate html
pages.  Nothing is too terribly complicated.  I've got about 20,000 columns
in various tables on that database.  The other two probably don't even have
a few hundred entries yet, I've just started with those.

I've had less problems using PostgreSQL than using the commercial database
that I'm porting everything from.  And the upgrade costs are much less.

Pat


-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Birch [mailto:sbirch@ironmountainsystems.com]
Sent: Monday, November 22, 1999 12:25 PM
To: pgsql-general@postgreSQL.org; pgsql-novice@postgreSQL.org
Subject: [NOVICE] Re: [GENERAL] Re: Is PostgreSQL ready for mission
criticalapplications?


I have been surprised by the response to this question.  I was hoping that
the responses would be more consistent, after all when software is
unreliable it is generally known by all users.

Although one would expect a subjective bias to the opinions, the answers
provided in the thread are highly polarized.   Jochen Topf gave a
frightening description of an unreliable database which gave unpredictable
results.  For example:


The most frustrating thing is that most bugs are not repeatable or at least

not repeatable in a small test script that I could send in with a bug
report.

Looking at the bug reports that come through the mailing list, there are a

lots of the type: X works here but not in this similar situation. This is

IMHO a symptom of a bad design. A recent upgrade (I think it was from 6.5

to 6.5.1 or something like that) helped a little bit but on the other hand

some query optimizations that worked before didn't work anymore.


This is pretty scary.


However, I then read another reply only to find that Brett McCoy is
converting "hundreds of thousands of documents" with no PostgresSQL problems
at all.  Brett indicates that:


So I think PostgreSQL is quite solid and reliable.  The only thing I think

that is sorely needed in PostgreSQL is referential integrity constraints

like foreign keys (although this can be emulated with triggers).


In fact, the lack of referential integrity constraints happens to be my
biggest concern - assuming the database is reliable, something that is
proving hard to determine.


Reading on, I see that "The Hermit Hacker" (love the name) also finds the
database to be reliable:


Odd, I've been using PostgreSQL since v1.x for exactly this same reason,

and we haven't had any problems with the database crashing since v6.x was

released.  Then again, the radius server opens/closes its connections as

required, instead of relynig on one persistent connection, so maybe that

helps, but that's just "application programming" vs backend...


There is a subtle implication that perhaps Jochen's problems are self
inflicted.  In a later email, Jochen responds and asks if he is the only one
using "advanced features" and suggests that they may be the cause of his
problems.  However, his list of "advanced features" is a little scary since
that are the very features that makes PostgreSQL so attractive in  the first
place - and I fully intend to use them!


So which is is guys, is this database dependable for commercial use - or is
an academic oddity, worth watching but not using?


Any other success or failure stories would be really helpful....


Is PostgresSQL ready for prime time, or is it limpware?


Steve


-------------------------------------------------


PS This thread was started in pgsql-general, I cross posted to pgsql-novice
as I am sure that some readers of that group would be interested in this
topic.  If you want to comment, please reply to
pgsql-general@postgreSQL.org, I don't want to fork the thread!