Thread: [OT] Any major users of postgresql?

[OT] Any major users of postgresql?

From
Joe Brenner
Date:
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... 



Re: [OT] Any major users of postgresql?

From
Bill Studenmund
Date:
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



Re: [OT] Any major users of postgresql?

From
Naomi Walker
Date:
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 



Re: [OT] Any major users of postgresql?

From
Joe Brenner
Date:
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...)



Re: [OT] Any major users of postgresql?

From
Martín Marqués
Date:
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.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Martin Marques                  |        mmarques@unl.edu.ar
Programador, Administrador      |       Centro de Telematica                      Universidad Nacional
        del Litoral
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------


Re: [OT] Any major users of postgresql?

From
Bruce Momjian
Date:
> 
> 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
 


Re: [OT] Any major users of postgresql?

From
ncm@zembu.com (Nathan Myers)
Date:
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


RE: [OT] Any major users of postgresql?

From
"Christopher Kings-Lynne"
Date:
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).



RE: [OT] Any major users of postgresql?

From
Colin Strickland
Date:
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");'


Re: [OT] Any major users of postgresql?

From
Gunnar Rønning
Date:
* 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/


Re: [OT] Any major users of postgresql?

From
Andrew McMillan
Date:
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


Re: [OT] Any major users of postgresql?

From
Colin Strickland
Date:
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");'


Re: [OT] Any major users of postgresql?

From
Alessio Bragadini
Date:
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


Re: [OT] Any major users of postgresql?

From
"John Moore"
Date:
> 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.





Re: Re: [OT] Any major users of postgresql?

From
Tom Lane
Date:
"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