Thread: [OT] Any major users of postgresql?
Sorry to bug the list with something a bit off topic, but I've been scrounging around for some examples of someone doing some fairly serious work with postgresql, and haven't yet been able to turn any up. Someone here must know a few off the top of their head... The reason I'm asking is that the place that I work is actually contemplating reverting from Oracle's expensive bugs to MySQL's (supposedly) cheap ones. They'd consider postgresql, but they figure that with MySQL they can at least point to sites that pump a fair amount of data with it (e.g. mp3.com). Please help save me from a life without referential integrity...
On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Joe Brenner wrote: > The reason I'm asking is that the place that I work is > actually contemplating reverting from Oracle's expensive > bugs to MySQL's (supposedly) cheap ones. They'd consider > postgresql, but they figure that with MySQL they can at > least point to sites that pump a fair amount of data with it > (e.g. mp3.com). > > Please help save me from a life without referential > integrity... sourceforge for one. They were using MySQL, then changed. Also, look at the postgres web site - there is an article there were someome did a speed comparison between PG & MySQL. Postgres came out on top, even in places where folks thought MySQL would win. Also, it depends on what your application is. If there is any amount of DB updates, PG will easily be the best choice. :-) Take care, Bill
Joe, We were also in the same predicament. Faced with Oracles steep cost and learning curve (I know Informix), we chose to move ahead with Postgresql. Its not in production yet, but I think it will do the trick for at least the short term. The only possible showstopper at the moment, is the current inability to replay transactions from the logical logs into a previous backup. I've been snooping around, and that ability is not far off. It is clear that the root to make that happen are in place (WAL). I'd also love to hear from some large-ish users, but everything i've read so far is extremely promising. I do love your comment about Oracles' expensive bugs (so true). Anyone out there want to chime in? At 10:44 AM 7/3/01 -0700, Joe Brenner wrote: >Sorry to bug the list with something a bit off topic, but >I've been scrounging around for some examples of someone >doing some fairly serious work with postgresql, and haven't >yet been able to turn any up. Someone here must know a few >off the top of their head... > >The reason I'm asking is that the place that I work is >actually contemplating reverting from Oracle's expensive >bugs to MySQL's (supposedly) cheap ones. They'd consider >postgresql, but they figure that with MySQL they can at >least point to sites that pump a fair amount of data with it >(e.g. mp3.com). > >Please help save me from a life without referential >integrity... > > >---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- >TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? > >http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html -- Naomi Walker Chief Information Officer Eldorado Computing, Inc. 602-604-3100 ext 242
Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@zembu.com> wrote: > sourceforge for one. They were using MySQL, then changed. Did they really switch though? Tim Perdue's articles on the subject are really good, but I wasn't sure if he really did the switch, or just investigated it and never got to it for some reason. If you look at the "About" information up on the sourceforge site, they still seem to be talking about MySQL. (Of course, it could just be that the page is out of date. If you look at the "Projects Page" on postgresql.org, you'd get the impression that the "Tuple-Toaster" hasn't been finished...)
On Mar 03 Jul 2001 23:13, you wrote:
> Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@zembu.com> wrote:
> > sourceforge for one. They were using MySQL, then changed.
>
> Did they really switch though? Tim Perdue's articles
> on the subject are really good, but I wasn't sure if he
> really did the switch, or just investigated it and never
> got to it for some reason. If you look at the "About"
> information up on the sourceforge site, they still seem
> to be talking about MySQL.
Yes! He did switch to PostgreSQL.
> (Of course, it could just be that the page is out of date.
> If you look at the "Projects Page" on postgresql.org, you'd
> get the impression that the "Tuple-Toaster" hasn't been
> finished...)
Not only tha, but lots of links, like the one to the phpPgAdmin page that is
now in Greatbridges.
Saludos... :-)
--
Cualquiera administra un NT.
Ese es el problema, que cualquiera administre.
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Martin Marques | mmarques@unl.edu.ar
Programador, Administrador | Centro de Telematica Universidad Nacional
del Litoral
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> > Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@zembu.com> wrote: > > > sourceforge for one. They were using MySQL, then changed. > > Did they really switch though? Tim Perdue's articles > on the subject are really good, but I wasn't sure if he > really did the switch, or just investigated it and never > got to it for some reason. If you look at the "About" > information up on the sourceforge site, they still seem > to be talking about MySQL. Sourceforge converted to PostgreSQL November, 2000. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 853-3000+ If your life is a hard drive, | 830 Blythe Avenue + Christ can be your backup. | Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania19026
On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 01:13:08PM -0700, Joe Brenner wrote: > > Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@zembu.com> wrote: > > > sourceforge for one. They were using MySQL, then changed. > > Did they really switch though? Tim Perdue's articles > on the subject are really good, but I wasn't sure if he > really did the switch, or just investigated it and never > got to it for some reason. If you look at the "About" > information up on the sourceforge site, they still seem > to be talking about MySQL. Current sources to SourceForge use features not supported in MySQL. (I gather that SourceForge also has been made to work with Oracle.) In fact, at last report the web site was running on a beta version of 7.1, and that they were not planning to move to the released version until a bug shows up that might affect them. Nathan Myers ncm@zembu.com
Try: www.sourceforge.net (A big, big PGsql based site)or www.calorieking.com (A site I've worked on)or http://www.pgsql.com/user_gallery/ (The pgsql user gallery) Let me tell you right now that MySQL initially sounds sexy, but it is a NIGHTMARE without referential integrity and transaction support. Chris > -----Original Message----- > From: pgsql-hackers-owner@postgresql.org > [mailto:pgsql-hackers-owner@postgresql.org]On Behalf Of Joe Brenner > Sent: Wednesday, 4 July 2001 1:44 AM > To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org > Subject: [HACKERS] [OT] Any major users of postgresql? > > > > Sorry to bug the list with something a bit off topic, but > I've been scrounging around for some examples of someone > doing some fairly serious work with postgresql, and haven't > yet been able to turn any up. Someone here must know a few > off the top of their head... > > The reason I'm asking is that the place that I work is > actually contemplating reverting from Oracle's expensive > bugs to MySQL's (supposedly) cheap ones. They'd consider > postgresql, but they figure that with MySQL they can at > least point to sites that pump a fair amount of data with it > (e.g. mp3.com).
On 04 Jul 2001 09:52:08 +0800, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote: > Try: > > www.sourceforge.net (A big, big PGsql based site) > or > www.calorieking.com (A site I've worked on) > or > http://www.pgsql.com/user_gallery/ (The pgsql user gallery) > > Let me tell you right now that MySQL initially sounds sexy, but it is a > NIGHTMARE without referential integrity and transaction support. > I can offer up www.accountingweb.co.uk www.crm-forum.com www.lawzone.co.uk www.travelmole.com and about half a dozen others. All of these sites are backed by a single postgresql 7.1 database By the end of this month all of the communities based around our SiftGroups platform ( www.sift.co.uk ) will be backed by postgresql. We have been migrating from MySQL and the intial results so far are extremely promising. ( It has only been live for 4 days, mind ). As the database developer I can say that in many ways we had reached a point with MySQL where we were struggling to scale it efficiently. We expect these problems to be overcome by using postgresql. -- Colin M Strickland perl -e'print "\n",map{chr(ord()-3)}(reverse split //,"\015%vhlwlqxpprF#ir#uhzrS#hkw#jqlvvhqudK%#\015\015nx". "1rf1wilv1zzz22=swwk###369<#84<#:44#77.={di##339<#84<#:44#77.=ohw\015]". "K9#4VE#/ORWVLUE#/whhuwV#dlurwflY#334#/wilV\015uhsrohyhG#ehZ#urlqhV");'
* Colin Strickland <cms@sift.co.uk> wrote:
|
| and about half a dozen others. All of these sites are backed by a single
| postgresql 7.1 database
|
| By the end of this month all of the communities based around our
| SiftGroups platform ( www.sift.co.uk ) will be backed by postgresql.
Cool ! Do you have any data on the total traffic ?
How man pageviews a day and also how dynamic each page view is
on average. By "dynamic" I mean the average number of
select/update/delete/insert operations for a pageview.
regards,
Gunnar
--
Gunnar Rønning - gunnar@polygnosis.com
Senior Consultant, Polygnosis AS, http://www.polygnosis.com/
Joe Brenner wrote: > > Please help save me from a life without referential > integrity... How major is major? I have several sites that get between 50,000 and 200,000 page views per day using Apache/PHP/PostgreSQL on single processor Linux servers. Particularly http://newsroom.co.nz/ which has a news database of around 60,000 articles. Cheers, Andrew. -- _____________________________________________________________________ Andrew McMillan, e-mail: Andrew@catalyst.net.nz Catalyst IT Ltd, PO Box 10-225, Level 22, 105 The Terrace, Wellington Me: +64(27)246-7091, Fax:+64(4)499-5596, Office: +64(4)499-2267xtn709
On 04 Jul 2001 12:02:21 +0200, Gunnar Rønning wrote:
> Cool ! Do you have any data on the total traffic ?
> How man pageviews a day and also how dynamic each page view is
> on average. By "dynamic" I mean the average number of
> select/update/delete/insert operations for a pageview.
>
> regards,
>
> Gunnar
>
I'm afraid that I'm not at liberty to divulge specific traffic
information(sorry).
I can safely say that some of the sites do grow very busy and almost all
pages are dynamic.
--
Colin M Strickland perl -e'print "\n",map{chr(ord()-3)}(reverse split
//,"\015%vhlwlqxpprF#ir#uhzrS#hkw#jqlvvhqudK%#\015\015nx".
"1rf1wilv1zzz22=swwk###369<#84<#:44#77.={di##339<#84<#:44#77.=ohw\015]".
"K9#4VE#/ORWVLUE#/whhuwV#dlurwflY#334#/wilV\015uhsrohyhG#ehZ#urlqhV");'
Joe Brenner wrote: > Sorry to bug the list with something a bit off topic, but > I've been scrounging around for some examples of someone > doing some fairly serious work with postgresql, and haven't > yet been able to turn any up. Someone here must know a few > off the top of their head... It probably depends on what you call "serious". Anyway, the project I am working on is a online community for alternate investments and is built around a PostgreSQL (first 7.0, now 7.1) database: it's <http://village.albourne.com> but unfortunately most of it is limited only to subscribers so there is not a lot db-related to see. It's PostreSQL + Apache + mod_perl on Digital Unix. Another site is <http://www.animalhouse.it>, an Italian web site about pet news and tips made by some friends of mine. It runs on a custom content management system, again on the PostgreSQL + Apache + mod_perl combination on Red Hat Linux. Being sponsored by a major portal, a lot of hits are expected, but the site is brand new so no data is available now. Apart from the obvious wins of data integrity, transactions, etc. both sites benefit from a number of SQL functions like triggers, foreign keys with cascade behaviour, custom functions, and especially views, that were simply not available under MySql. From all these, I would pick views: I simply cannot see how you can arrange a coherent db design (especially for a web project) without using views. Hope it helps. -- Alessio F. Bragadini alessio@albourne.com APL Financial Services http://village.albourne.com Nicosia, Cyprus phone: +357-2-755750 "It is more complicated than you think" -- The Eighth Networking Truth from RFC 1925
> It probably depends on what you call "serious". Anyway, the project I am > working on is a online community for alternate investments and is built > around a PostgreSQL (first 7.0, now 7.1) database: it's > <http://village.albourne.com> but unfortunately most of it is limited > only to subscribers so there is not a lot db-related to see. It's > PostreSQL + Apache + mod_perl on Digital Unix. > I would define "serious use" as use in transactional applications where the loss of data input by users is a very bad thing, and the uptime requirements are 24x7, with availability requirements overall of >99%. <p> As an example, and where most of my past experience has been, consider a reservation system for an airline or hotel chain. Such a system may have hundreds to thousands of transactions per second. More importantly, tens per second of those transactions which must not be lost - i.e. reservations/changes/cancellations - and which are worth real money. Losing, say, 15 minutes of these is a catastrophe. Note also that transactions are not equivalent to page views - in this case a single "page view" would result in a series of many database operations to generate a single response. <p> An even tougher example would be an online financial system such as an ATM debit system. In that case, you can hand someone a lot of money as a result of a transaction. Loss of that data is exactly loss of the money! <p> In the case of PostgreSQL, as far as I can tell, one could lose all data since the previous dump if one lost the database media. In Oracle or Informix, that is *not* true, because they can do a point-in-time restore from the last full save, based on the WAL's.
"John Moore" <NOSPAMnews@NOSPAMtinyvital.com> writes: > In the case of PostgreSQL, as far as I can tell, one could lose all data > since the previous dump if one lost the database media. In Oracle or > Informix, that is *not* true, because they can do a point-in-time restore > from the last full save, based on the WAL's. If you are archiving the WAL logs, then in theory you could recover from those in Postgres as well. In practice, I consider this argument irrelevant, because no one is going to want to work that way. (Nigh-infinite offline storage for the logs, plus huge recovery time if you do suffer a crash ... I don't think so.) A more reasonable approach to getting better-than-hardware reliability is replicated servers. We have some crude ways of replicating data now, and should have much better ways in a release or two. (See http://www.greatbridge.org/genpage?replication_top for some info on stuff that will likely get rolled into the standard distribution eventually. I consider Postgres-R the most promising approach.) As of today, I wouldn't try to run an airline reservation system on Postgres either. But check back in a year or so. regards, tom lane