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Businesses Software The Almighty Buck

UML, PostgreSQL Get Corporate Support 213

Posted by timothy from the what's-good-for-'em dept.
tcopeland writes "An article on NewsForge highlights some changes in the upcoming PostgreSQL release (v7.5) that are funded by Fujitsu. PostgreSQL core team member Josh Berkus says that "Tablespaces, Nested Transactions, and Java support" are being underwritten by Fujitsu; this has also been mentioned on the postgresql-hackers list. He also says that 7.5 will be "...the most significant new release of the software since version 7.0 almost four years ago". Good times for PostgreSQL users!" And ggoebel writes "Jeff Dike posted a notice to the UML [User-mode Linux] developers mailing list: 'The first bit of news is that as of last Monday, I am working for Intel. They generously offered a full-time position, off-site, with my time mostly spent on UML. This basically means that UML is no longer a part-time, after-hours thing for me, so we should start seeing more work happening on it, especially compared to the last month or two.'"
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UML, PostgreSQL Get Corporate Support More

UML, PostgreSQL Get Corporate Support

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  • UML is pretty awesome (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:22PM (#9584075)
    It's really the future of "shared" webhosting because it balances the power of a full server against the cost of a shared one. Some hosts like JVDS [jvds.com] and RimuHosting [rimuhosting.com] are already doing this and it's great.

    • Re:UML is pretty awesome (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gtrubetskoy ( 734033 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:34PM (#9584209)
      It's really the future of "shared" webhosting because it balances the power of a full server against the cost of a shared one.

      I respecfully disagree. While UML gives you excellent isolation, it is an extremely inefficient way to virtualize your server since it does not take advantage (by design) of all the optimizations that UN*X provides. UML is great for kernel developers and applications where isolation is far more important than performance.

      In Linux virtual server hosting, the future will be Linux VServer Project [linux-vserver.org]

      (ok, I'm somewhat biased, I admit)

      • Linux VServer might be the future, but the documentation is so far in the past, we'll never know.

        Why are Wikis always touted as the solution to documentation, yet every time I try to find useful information in some project Wiki, it is always useless?

        Ahh, there's a paper on VServers. Sounds kind of like jails with more separation. However, the filesystem separation of UML is a feature. VServers are good for completely managed hosting, I'm sure, but UML is the answer to people who want to get whole machin

  • 'The first bit of news is that as of last Monday, I am working for Intel. They generously offered a full-time position, off-site, with my time mostly spent on UML. This basically means that UML is no longer a part-time, after-hours thing for me, so we should start seeing more work happening on it, especially compared to the last month or two.'

    Will this mean that Intel might have a chance to influence its development? The true benefit of projects such as this is their independence from the big brother corp

    • Re:That's all fine and dandy, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jbolden ( 176878 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:35PM (#9584218) Homepage
      Well obviously if they are funding development then they will have influence on what gets worked on. What political agenda do you see Intel as likely to have on advancing user mode? It would seem to me that this is fairly typical of Intel software devleopment for the last 15 years -- making sure that there is publically available code highlighting how to do cool things with their CPUs.
      • It would seem to me that this is fairly typical of Intel software devleopment for the last 15 years -- making sure that there is publically available code highlighting how to do cool things with their CPUs.

        True, but funding UML seems kind of curious. After all, if you can virtualize, then theoretically you're going to be buying fewer of those Intel processors. So, what are those bunny-suited Intellers up to?

    • Re:That's all fine and dandy, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SIGALRM ( 784769 ) * on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:39PM (#9584268) Journal
      The true benefit of projects such as this is their independence from the big brother corporations

      You mean like Sun and HP funding the Apache group [apache.org]?

      Or Novell and Ximian underwriting the Mono Project [mono-project.com]?

      Or IBM contributing to F/OSS [ibm.com]?

      Do you think these and other projects would be where they are today without the backing of serious money/resources?
      • I just think that, with the funding, the projects are encouraged in a certain direction. This isn't always bad, but seeing something with a "Optimized for the Pentium 4" logo always makes me wonder what would have happened if it didnt have this funding. (I would say the same thing if it was optimized for AMD)...
        • I just think that, with the funding, the projects are encouraged in a certain direction. This isn't always bad, but seeing something with a "Optimized for the Pentium 4" logo always makes me wonder what would have happened if it didnt have this funding.

          You've seen free software projects with "Optimized for the Pentium 4" on them?

          I think people may not realize the extent to which free software development is already corporate-funded.

          --Bruce Fields

        • > the projects are encouraged in a certain direction.

          True enough, but isn't the major advantage of F/OSS that, even if company Foo wants to pour money into developing feature "X", if I want feature "Y", I can still develop that on my own? Granted, it might take more time, and it might even be more difficult, but I'm still free to build any extensions I want, as long as I have the time and resources. Company Foo doesn't "own" the project. They just get to encourage people to develop features they nee

      • Re:That's all fine and dandy, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Sxooter ( 29722 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @03:33PM (#9585606)
        That's not the same thing. If the higher ups at Oracle tell the Oracle developers to include a dubios feature that may be bug ridden, the developers DO IT because they were told to.

        If IBM tells the apache group to put in dubious and buggy code, the apache group tells them to buzz off.

        There is a difference, even if it isn't obvious at first glance.
    • Loosen up that tinfoil hat, man. This is a pretty natural project for Intel to invest in. Improved User Mode Linux leads naturally to more shared servers, as others have detailed. And, in the interest of efficiency, those shared server operators will be interested in nice, juicy processors to allow more virtual servers on the same piece of physical hardware.

      Sounds like a simple business investment to me - no need to search for conspiracies here.
    • "Will this mean that Intel might have a chance to influence its development? The true benefit of projects such as this is their independence from the big brother corporations who attempt to control the industry/market."

      Man the anti-corporation mind set really gets me sometimes. There are benifits to large corporatins. We would not have cheap super powerful PCs without them.
      Unix cam from the granddaddy of all mega corps AT&T.

      Let's see Intel is going to PAY this guy and he will also probably get benifit

  • clarification please... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:23PM (#9584085)
    UML ....

    (1) Unified Modeling Language?

    or (2) User Mode Linux?

    Methinks (2), given that I work alot with (1) and have never heard of Jeff Dike
  • ...RubyForge [rubyforge.org] has been running on it for almost a year now, no problems.

    Only a half million records and only about 75K queries a day, so it's not a huge DB... but it's definitely getting the job done.

  • UML is no longer a part-time, after-hours thing (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:25PM (#9584113)
    This basically means that UML is no longer a part-time, after-hours thing for me

    You have my deepest sympathy.

  • UML (Score:5, Informative)

    by Un pobre guey ( 593801 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:25PM (#9584115) Homepage
    OK, UML is User Mode Linux [sourceforge.net]. Got it. No, no, I'm not confused, I get the coincidence with the other extremely widespread use of the acronym. No prob, Dude.

  • UML (Score:2, Informative)

    by lorcha ( 464930 )
    Who the hell is Jeff Dike and why is he working on the Unified Modeling Language [uml.org]? And why does Intel care about it?

    Oh, you meant User-mode Linux? Well, why didn't you say so? Sometimes I think these writeups are intentionally confusing.

    • Re:UML (Score:2, Interesting)

      by timothy ( 36799 )
      Lorcha --

      You're right; I'd meant to parse the name and add in a link (as I now have done) to the project's web page.

      timothy

      • Re:UML (Score:3, Funny)

        by Ignignot ( 782335 )
        Egad, a slashdot editor has apologized for giving an incomplete story blurb! Did I cross over into... The Twilight Zone?

        Thanks timothy

  • Table spaces? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <`akaimbatman' `at' `gmail.com'> on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:29PM (#9584163) Homepage Journal
    Does this mean that PostGreSQL will actually be able to write *directly* to disk cluster? That would be one serious performance boost! My only request is that they do us all a favor and make sure that we can fragment the tables across spaces. It tends to suck when one table fills an entire drive, and it refuses to use all the space on the other drives.

    • Re:Table spaces? (Score:5, Informative)

      by jadavis ( 473492 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:41PM (#9584294)
      "Tablespaces" allow you to put individual tables on different storage devices. Prior to tablespaces, an entire database had to be on one device*.

      You are referring to two completely different technologies:

      (1) "Writing directly to disk cluster" - By that you seem to mean direct disk access, not through the filesystem. I don't even think this is part of the PostgreSQL TODO, because there is just not a very strong need. Are you experiencing performance problems in this regard?

      (2) "fragment tables across spaces" - By that you mean "Table Partitioning". That allows you to break up a single table across multiple storage devices. That would be very valuable technology, but as far as I know, won't make 7.5.

      If all these features really work out for 7.5, they should call the release 8.0, and maybe they will.

      *: There are some tricks you can use if you need to move a single table to a different device prior to 7.5. I think symlinks work fine, but if it's important, I'd wait for 7.5 or ask on the -general list to make sure it's correct.
      • Here I was hoping that we could replace Oracle. Ah well, good news none the less. Thanks for the info. :-)
        • Actually, tablespaces is already in CVS tip today, the day of the feature freeze and should make it into the final release.

          Writing to a raw partition is no real winner for PostgreSQL, and not likely to be implented until someone can SHOW that they'd be faster for an actual test case and then do the work.

      • Re:Table spaces? (Score:5, Informative)

        by GooberToo ( 74388 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @02:26PM (#9584816)
        "Tablespaces" allow you to put individual tables on different storage devices. Prior to tablespaces, an entire database had to be on one device*.

        Strictly speaking, that's not true. You can move things around manually, and some have done so, but it's not pretty, not easy, and not easy to maintain. Implementation of tablespaces in PostgreSQL simply allows its users to easily do what was previously an arcane-voodoo art. So clearly, it's a big step up. But, you already knew that. ;)

        "Writing directly to disk cluster" - By that you seem to mean direct disk access, not through the filesystem. I don't even think this is part of the PostgreSQL TODO, because there is just not a very strong need. Are you experiencing performance problems in this regard?

        That's correct. AFAIK, there is no desire to implement raw partition support. The speed difference is minimal and the required code is large. Basically, you wind up writing a FS and associated buffer management into the database. The return generally is not very high. It used to be, many years ago. These days, filesystem technology and implementations are plenty fast. Those that want raw partition access, IMO, are simply living in the past.

        If all these features really work out for 7.5, they should call the release 8.0, and maybe they will.

        You are correct. Accordingly to the list, the numbering constantly goes back and forth. From what i gather, they are waiting to see what features actually make it in. Depending on the scope of changes, they'll then determine the version number. As a rule of thumb, people are calling it 7.5, simply because nothing else has been blessed.

        Please don't think I'm correcting what you've said. You've said nothing that I disagree with. I'm simply adding a followup remark. ;)

        Cheers!

      • Re:Table spaces? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Just Some Guy ( 3352 ) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Thursday July 01, 2004 @03:03PM (#9585250) Homepage Journal
        By that you mean "Table Partitioning". That allows you to break up a single table across multiple storage devices.

        For the uninitiated and lazy, is there any compelling reason why that's better than putting the database files on a RAID and letting the OS split the table across devices?

        • Re:Table spaces? (Score:5, Informative)

          by kpharmer ( 452893 ) * on Thursday July 01, 2004 @03:11PM (#9585347)
          > For the uninitiated and lazy, is there any compelling reason why that's better than putting the
          > database files on a RAID and letting the OS split the table across devices?

          Sure, you might want to distribute your data across multiple arrays. For example - keep your logs and tempspace on an fast & expensive raid 0+1 array of fast (15k drives). Then put small OLTP stuff on a another raid 0+1 array. Then put your huge graphic images, documents, etc on a much more economical RAID5 array.

          I use multiple arrays all the time for performance and economics (in db2 & oracle) - this is cool to see postgres pick itup.
          • That seems reasonable. Thanks for the explanation.
          • It's fairly trivial to put your logs on a seperate device. I do it wit a symlink. Probably not the best solution but it works. On one machine, I have my /var mounted on a seperated device and put my pgsql logs in there. I don't remember if that's the default location. Just splitting up your logs and your data on seperate devices makes a big difference in performance. I actually didn't RTFA this time so I'm not quite sure what the new feature is all about. I guess it just makes it easier to set this u
            • > As for graphics, images, documents, etc, I never usually have those associated with the db in the
              > first place. Keep em on the filesystem with the web tier stuff. Do you really put this stuff in the
              > DB? Or were you just remarking in general about splitting up files by what they are used for?

              Both actually. I was just generalizing for an example. However, as much as I'd prefer to avoid putting files in a database, it is sometimes necessary.

              A few examples of where it's necessary include:

              - some
            • I believe grandparent post is refering to transaction logs, not diagnostic logs which is what you're thinking of I think
            • As for graphics, images, documents, etc, I never usually have those associated with the db in the first place. Keep em on the filesystem with the web tier stuff. Do you really put this stuff in the DB?

              Yes, almost anytime you have mug shots of people (e.g. HR, FBI terrorist suspects, etc.) they go in a db along with the rest of the individual's HR record. And it isn't that unusual to store documents in a db, either.

        • Re:Table spaces? (Score:4, Informative)

          by Java Ape ( 528857 ) <<mike.briggs> <at> <360.net>> on Thursday July 01, 2004 @03:29PM (#9585546) Homepage
          The answer to this question depends on what your database looks like. For most small, general purpose databases the RAID approach is great. Fast, simple and not much planning required.

          However, for larger or more complex systems there are some advantages to splitting tables over multiple disk systems. For example, tables with lots of little niggling disk writes (access tables, change logs, temp tables) can go on a fast (possibly striped) disk system. You don't have to waste high-priced, high performance RAID on archived data (if it crashes, restore from tape), or on large media files etc stored as blobs or clobs.

          These are just examples, but on a large server with several different disk sytems available, this technology lets the database designer match storage system performance characteristics much more accurately than a simple raid.

    • Re:Table spaces? (Score:2, Informative)

      by rgigger ( 637061 )
      No it does not write directly to the disk cluster if you mean that it can write to a raw unformatted disk. They want to get all of the nice buffering for free from the os because they can't beat it's performance yet. Writing directly to the raw disk would slow it down right now. They are going to reconsider this if someone can write a caching system that can beat the os but so far that hasn't happened.

      They also do not have table partioning. It has been discussed and it is a high priority feature but it

      • Re:Table spaces? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jadavis ( 473492 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:55PM (#9584430)
        They are going to reconsider this if someone can write a caching system that can beat the os but so far that hasn't happened.

        It's a little more complicated I think. Using the filesystem has other advantages as well:

        (1) PostgreSQL can work well with other applications running. Let's say you invent the best caching algorithm possible, then you still have two seperate caches, one for PostgreSQL and one for everything else. That means you have to dedicate the machine to PostgreSQL and have a high PostgreSQL cache (but any other app will suffer), or give postgres a low amount of cache space and it will suffer.

        (2) The postgres developers don't want to worry about the bugs involved in making their own filesystem. Also, who's to say they can make a filesystem as fast right off the bat? It might be a huge development effort, with relatively minor benefit for most people.
    • From this description, table spaces seem pretty pointless to me (i.e. writing tables to different disks). RAID already does this for you. So, anyone? What's the point?
      • It's more of a space issue type of thing. If I have X amount of space on these disks, and I realize that the new tables I want to create will be too large to fit in that X space, I can add Y disks and create my tables there.

      • Re:what's the point? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by sumbry ( 644145 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @08:01PM (#9588129) Homepage
        You've obviously never run a large database before. While a single RAID partition is fine for most uses, when you get into situations where you measure queries by how many are run per second then things really start to hit the fan.

        Tablespaces allow you to do things like place a table that is 90 percent read and 10 percent write on one RAID array while taking another table that is maybe 50 percent write and 50 percent read on another table and then taking the Postgres WAL and placing that on a completely different array.

        Table usage varies greatly across large databases. Some tables barely get touched, others get written to alot, others get read from alot.

        I'm currently running a database where our peak loads are around 35 queries, per second. I've actually symlinked table locations to put my most heavily accessed tables on a seperate RAID array from the rest of my database. This gave me a 3 fold increase in speed. This is really noticed when we do things like VACUUM the db.

  • I'm a programmer (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tim C ( 15259 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:35PM (#9584221)
    I suspect a lot of people here are. To me, and probably to most of them, UML is Unified Modelling Language. Hell, do a google search [google.co.uk] for UML and the top hit is to the UML website [uml.org].

    I know it's too much to ask OSS projects not to pick confusing acronyms and names, but I'd like to think that story submitters or at least editors could a little clearer.
    • Slashdot also has lots of systems-level types, for whom user mode linux is a damn powerful tool but who often don't hold with that whole modeling-language idea.

      No real reason to cater to one audiance over the other -- I think it's perfectly reasonable for folks to actually (say) check what the UML link points at and run from context.
    • If they had given it a name such as "Linux On Linux" then it would have a better acronym.

      Then CoLinux could have become "Linux On Windows", which also has a good acronym.
    • Jeff Dike started user-mode linux in February 1998

      message from jeff [iu.edu]

      Unified Modelling Language may have existed in early 1998; I first saw it in April 1999. But Unified Modelling Language was a lot smaller back then.

      And Google did not exist in February 1998!

      These days, when I need to name something, I stick the name in google and check for conflicts.
  • ...some on PGFoundry [pgfoundry.org], some still on GBorg [postgresql.org].

    PLUG: For example, there's this little SQL query analysis [postgresql.org] utility!

  • All Welcome and expected - expect more.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by eamacnaghten ( 695001 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:37PM (#9584249) Homepage Journal
    This is great news, not only for the projects involved, but for FOSS in general.

    Also this is consistent with the Open Source Paradigm. Where it is in the interests of companies to improve the software, and the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages of them not being exclusive. It is this philosophy, in my opinion, that will beat proprietary software models such as Microsoft, and it is these companies that are key in stopping those who want to halt the advancments of FOSS using idiotic patents and other invalid IP arguments.

    • This is also great news for the BSD license in general. Many people believe that the only true OS License is the GPL, because of it's requirement that all improvements are always kept open; That with the BSD license, companies will just take the source, brand it, and never give anything back to the community.

      This is just another example of a company not having to be forced to do the right thing, but rather just doing the right thing because they recognize the advantages. Kudos.

  • OLAP still missing... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zeux ( 129034 ) * on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:38PM (#9584255)
    I'm really looking for an OLAP implementation on PostgreSQL... It's getting more an more important but it's still not there!

    I made my company switch from SQL Server to PostgreSQL but now I have to export data every day from PostgreSQL to SQL Server just to get my OLAP reports!

    As soon as OLAP is there I'll definitely get rid of SQL Server.
    • I love PostgreSQL. I support Open Source. But I have to say: perhaps you shouldn't have forced a switch to PostgreSQL if it didn't actually meet all of your (and more importantly your company's) needs. Sounds like SQL Server was the better solution in this case.
    • I would love to hear move comments about what OLAP features are missing, as it relates to your requirements. OLAP is a topic which comes up from time to time but real world use is often not offered.

      Keep in mind that I am not an OLAP guy, so you may need to talk down to me. ;)

      Cheers!
      • > I would love to hear move comments about what OLAP features are missing, as it relates to your
        > requirements. OLAP is a topic which comes up from time to time but real world use is often not
        > offered.

        Sure - grouping sets, rollup, and cube commands. These allow you to create a cube with subtotals of various dimensions in a single pass of the data. Hugely useful for cross-tab reports, olap/reporting tools, etc.

        But, as someone else pointed out, data partitioning & parallelism are the key per
      • Okay, I'll bite. While I am certainly not an OLAP expert, I have found a need to learn a little about it and I plan to use it as part of an application I am developing for personal use.

        For the uninitiated, OLAP stands for online analytical processing. In layman's terms, this refers to the process of interactive analysis of data, typically via incremental queries that progressively slice, dice, and refine the data set in order to reveal non-obvious relationships between various parameters.

        OLAP is typically
    • I've used the OLAP stuff on SQL Server, and I honestly didn't find it much help. From what I saw, it was practically a *report writer* front-end on top of the underlying database--not nearly enough power for the problems my company has.

      True OLAP often involves many layers of analysis, with many steps of processing. I had hoped that SQL Server OLAP would help manage all that, but it doesn't do enough. To be fair, there are some nice tools to graphically create what amouont to some stored procedures, but

  • Postgres is kicking butt (Score:5, Interesting)

    by johnnyb ( 4816 ) <jonathan@bartlettpublishing.com> on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:44PM (#9584330) Homepage
    and taking names. In addition to Fujitsu's additions, they are also doing point-in-time recovery. They have multiple replication solutions. It's an absolutely wonderful database to develop for.

    It's got several really cool features, such as the ability to create your own index types, the ability to create your own column types, the ability to create rules for updating views, and a lot of other things that make it an absolute joy to work with.

    The only thing I don't like about it is that it needs the ability to read bytea's as if they were BLOBs. Then life would be perfect!

    From Fujitsu's pile, tablespaces is the most interesting feature I see - and that's actually pretty cool. That's one of the things that really allows you to realize the logical/physical separation that relational databases promise.

    • In addition to Fujitsu's additions, they are also doing point-in-time recovery. They have multiple replication solutions. It's an absolutely wonderful database to develop for.

      I'd trade most of these new features for that one right there. If you have a 10Gb database full of transactional data, you can't do full dumps continuously, but equally you can't afford to lose a day or even an hour of data since the last full dump.

      I know its being worked on. This is the one feature keeping me away from PostgreSQ

    • Which replication mechanism would you (or anyone reading, for that matter) recommend? I'd like to bring up Pg as an alternative in a proposed application with a fairly high transactional load, which probably means that whatever DB we go with will need to support some sort of load-balancing/clustering/replication.

  • This rules! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:46PM (#9584353)
    I'm loading more than half a million records into a Postgres db on my iBook as I write this, and I gotta say that pgsql is cool as hell. The data type support alone (polygons?!?!) makes it worth the small amount of extra effort it takes to get it up and running.

    Postgres flat blows away MySQL in every way I can thnk of except for the fact that one has to "manually" vacuum (cleanup + reindex) the db ... but that's what cron is for. The only things I miss from my MSSQL days is the ability to do on-the-fly data type changes on columns; this is actually a good thing because now I'm not so lazy about designing the db right in the first place. ;-)

    If you're out there playing with MySQL or MSSQL, you owe it to yourself to give Postgres a shot.

    • Re:This rules! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by tesmako ( 602075 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @02:03PM (#9584527) Homepage
      Just having a polygon datatype is kinda cool in itself, but the fact that PostgreSQL really supports using R-tree indexes and thus make efficient geometric queries quickly and easily is really great.

      PostgreSQL is probably the most well-polished and useful open source project there is (gcc being the runner up, I skip linux since there really are plenty of decent OSS alternatives to it). Good going PostgreSQL team!

    • Use the auto-vacuume daemon. You'll need to turn on some statistics gathering too. Once the daemon is running, it periodically checks the db statistics to determine what needs to be done when. It takes care of it for you. Check the docs, it's fully explained.

      Make sure you're using the current release and use the daemon. I think you'll be thrilled. :)

      Cheers!
    • With PostgreSQL 7.5 (currently in feature freeze) contains the ability to alter a column type.

      Sit tight through the beta period and you'll have your wish.
    • makes it worth the small amount of extra effort it takes to get it up and running.

      I'm curious about what that extra effort is. I develop on postgres and manage about 6 instances with a few dozen databases, and I've never had to do more than "./configure && make install" and maybe cp the "large database" config example. Can't really see how it could get simpler.

  • Good news! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rfernand79 ( 643913 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:53PM (#9584411)
    Certainly good news! :) PostgreSQL is a very robust and complete database, enjoyed by many academic users (mostly because of its excellent implementation of different SQL standards...) It's nice to hear that a company is backing them up now. UML and Intel, really cool, too. It's not as good as Linus/OSDL, but definitelly equivalent to the Linus/Transmeta years. So, in general, is this the road for the free world now? Backed up by powerful companies who also benefit? I certainly hope so.
  • ...can be found on the Big List Of GForge Sites [gforge.org].

    Props to Tim Perdue for picking a solid database on which to build GForge [gforge.org]!

  • User-Mode Linux Management (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 01, 2004 @01:59PM (#9584474)
    ...If you want to manage a lot of UML virtual machines, I _highly_ recommend UMLazi [umlazi.org]. It has a very slick configuration file format-- configuration directories instead of a single file, which makes it really easy to manipulate with scripts--, and they've obviously put a lot of thought into security.

    I had a few problems getting it started, but the developers were very helpful.

  • Why corporate self-interest can be good for OSS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by j. andrew rogers ( 774820 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @02:02PM (#9584512)
    There is more than just Fujitsu supporting PostgreSQL and the reasons there is corporate interest is pure unadulterated self-interest of the best kind.

    Postgres is getting really close to the functionality and capabilities of the Big Commercial Enterprise DBMS, close enough that anyone can see that bridging that gap is quite doable. Most of the arguable weaknesses in Postgres are in the more esoteric high-end feature space, as it is already strong and quite feature complete for most routine RDBMS work. And the upcoming new version addresses a great many of those weaknesses. As the article said, this is going to be a major release.

    The self-interest part is that it is a HELL OF A LOT CHEAPER for a corporation to pay people to add those last few features and bits that they want to Postgres than to pay an unholy amount of money to buy the required Oracle licenses. The Postgres engine is clean and fundamentally pretty good in an engineering sense, and so enterprise feature tweaks are relatively cheap. It is all about dollars and sense at the end of the day. Purchasing Postgres plus feature development is almost always going to be vastly cheaper than buying Oracle. And unlike Oracle, it is pretty much a one-time fixed cost. It is worth repeating that the engineering strength and scalability of the underlying Postgres platform is the primary reason the market is evolving this way. The gap between MySQL and high-end RDBMS is comparatively much too great for a company to fund closing that gap because a lot of additional arguably unrelated work may be required because of the internals. This increases time to delivery of features, increases the cost of adding high-end features, and increases the risk of problems.

    If Oracle suddenly dropped its enterprise licensing costs by a couple of order of magnitude, then it would seriously threaten Postgres development. But since that is unlikely to happen, corporate money will continue to flow into making Postgres a formidable Oracle replacement, which it is already well on its way to being.

    • Make no mistake: I am both a PostgreSQL user and a major advocate for it where I work. At the same time, I would make one little comment on this:

      Most of the arguable weaknesses in Postgres are in the more esoteric high-end feature space

      Some of those esoteric features are things like clustering/failover, which in my view aren't really so esoteric. Yes, I do know that there is third party support for it, but it isn't free.

      Raw partition support would also be a good checkbox in the 'enterprise ready' tab

      • Raw partition support would also be a good checkbox in the 'enterprise ready' table.

        What does raw partition support have to do with enterprise applications?

        When I think about raw partition access, I think about a huge amount of code that allows some minor optimizations that help only on dedicated postgres boxes.
        • Using a raw partition typically means bypassing the filesystem code in the OS. Since most databases simply consist of a small number of large files that are randomly accessed by the database system, the overhead of the filesystem is unnecessary. Not having a filesystem between your database and the disk also means faster crash recovery - there's no need to run FSCK on the (largely irrelevant) filesystem AND run a database consistency check - you can jump right to the latter.

          You're right about this being fo
          • My experience is with Oracle, so my comments here will be mostly restricted to that context. You are correct in saying that database servers are best dedicated to that function alone; the resources involved (memory, network, etc.) in running a non-trivial database server usually demand their own machine.

            I take some exception, however, to your view on raw partitions vs. filesystem-based storage. At least in the Oracle world, most studies and expert opinion I have viewed generally recommend against use of ra

  • windows port (Score:3, Informative)

    by MagicMerlin ( 576324 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @02:26PM (#9584818)
    7.5 will contain a native windows port with no external dependencies. You can find the current binary version here. [postgresql.org]

    Even though it is currently in beta it works very well. The port is now being downloaded over 2000 times a week and increasing all the time.

  • Also in PostgreSQL 7.5 - Native Windows Port (Score:4, Informative)

    by john_smith_45678 ( 607592 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @02:26PM (#9584819) Journal
    Looks like version 7.5 will also include a native Windows port. Prior to this, PostgreSQL on Windows has always required Cygwin (which offers a lot of great stuff in and of itself) to run.
  • ... where are distributed transactions? Is that even planned? That's the one feature I would love to see.
  • is a terrible acronym, since it already means Unified Modeling Language. Since User-mode is hyphenated, shouldn't it be UL? Oh, wait, that stands for Underwriter's Laboratory. Oh, well, they need to change the name.
  • Not to be rude, but who chose the name UML for User Mode Linux?

    Do they have a diagram or something I can look at? I want to really understand what User Mode Linux "is".
  • I have given UML a try a number of times (I need it right now too!) but I've never figured it out. If anyone happens to have a link to a good HOWTO, whitepaper or guide I'd love to have it. I'm sure others would too.

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