Question for the geeks.

[AndyMan 7]

Anybody use postgres or the RedHat database on production systems?
I'm speccing out a new project, am thinking of ditching Oracle to cut 17 grand...
Is Postgres a production quality system?
_Am
ICQ: 5578907
MSN Messenger: andrewdmetcalfe at hotmail dot com
Yahoo IM: ametcalf_1999

[ChromeBoy 0]

No habla espanol. Kachink,
ChromeBoy
-Mirage G3 Unisyn-

[kevin922 0]

Quote

Anybody use postgres or the RedHat database on production systems?
I'm speccing out a new project, am thinking of ditching Oracle to cut 17 grand...
Is Postgres a production quality system?

I like to go by the saying "You get what you pay for" it all depends on what the project is. I stand by oracle, of course all the projects I work on require a beast such as oracle. I would use postgres (don't know about RedHat database) for something more along the lines of a personal website database, something a lot smaller.
That's just me - when you have a lot riding on a project (i.e. it is production) I prefer something that has been proven.
Just my opinion of course.

[AndyMan 7]

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I like to go by the saying "You get what you pay for" it all depends on what the project is. I stand by oracle, of course all the projects I work on require a beast such as oracle. I would use postgres (don't know about RedHat database) for something more along the lines of a personal website database, something a lot smaller.

I used to say the same thing.
However, we've been running redHat and sendmail on our production mail servers for the last year. The maintenance time alone has saved us bundles over Exchange.
We need to do a very large b2c online store. We were first looking at commercial products from companies like intershop. Our licensing costs for Intershop would be in excess of $150,000 Instead we've chosen RedHat's InterChange - free. From what I can tell, it's feature rich and will do the job just fine.
Normally I develop java servlets. So we need a servlet runner. The most common servlet runners are bea's weblogic and IBM's websphere. Both of these have licensing fees in excess of $50,000. We run our production servers on Resin. Resin is open sourced and free. As far as I'm concerned, Resin is not only cheaper, but better then Weblogic or Websphere.
Every time we've tried open source, we've found it to be at least equivalent in quality, plus far cheaper both in initial outlay of cash plus maintenance labor.
I used to say "you get what you pay for". Since using sendmail and resin I know this is not the case. The open software is superior in almost every respect to the commercial counterpoint.
I have absolutely no qualms against recomending Sendmail or Resin for "bet your business applications". In fact, my business is bet on Resin.
This will be a very large b2c eStore, it will be done for a fortune 500 manufacturing company, and it will at least partly be done on open source infastrcuture (redHat, interchange).
My question is should we include the RedHatDB here, too.
The RedHatDB *is* postgres.
So I ask - is postgres ready for production?
And yes, I'm intentionally asking here because I know what answer I'll get from the postgres people. I know there's a bunch of geeks here, and I hope one of them has actually used it.
_Am
ICQ: 5578907
MSN Messenger: andrewdmetcalfe at hotmail dot com
Yahoo IM: ametcalf_1999

[kevin922 0]

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And yes, I'm intentionally asking here because I know what answer I'll get from the postgres people. I know there's a bunch of geeks here, and I hope one of them has actually used it.

Humm.. well good luck. We use apache and sendmail here, I don't think it is wise to compare sendmail to exchange - anything unix is going to be a lot better than a microsoft product (again, in my opinion). Let me know how it goes.
Kevin

[PhillyKev 0]

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I prefer something that has been proven

Ummm.....Linux has been around quite awhile and due to open source has everyone and their grandmother trying to hack and break it anyway they can. The result is the best tested and stable OS available.
In 2000 only Windows outpaced Linux in terms of number of servers to be used in commercial implementations shipped with the OS installed. Linux beat Unix and Novell. See attached.
cielos azules y cerveza fría
-Kevin

[skycat 0]

Where does solaris fit in that chart? Just curious cause every company I've worked for has banked on solaris.

[PhillyKev 0]

The 2% marked as "other". How many of those companies had farms of Solaris machines? One, maybe 2, and then about a gazillion NT boxes because you can't use NT to do more than one thing at a time.
cielos azules y cerveza fría
-Kevin

[skycat 0]

Ah true.......and you are right we have about 30 sun machines and like 100 NT machines that do less or at least less of a load than the sun machines.

[Zennie 0]

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Where does solaris fit in that chart?

I'd consider it another flavor of UNIX. But then again, I consider Linux really a flavor of UNIX.
The "other" I would consider the mainframe stuff like AIX and VMS.
As far as DBs go, I've heard good things about mySQL. The only problem with the Linux DBs is that they don't have trigger or stored procedure support. That's why I tend to favor Oracle. Which, BTW, does anyone know if there's an Oracle for Linux?
"Zero Tolerance: the politically correct term for zero thought, zero common sense."

[PhreeZone 20]

Now thats not really a fair statement... Solaris boxes tend to be way beefer then your run of the mill NT Box. How many 24 processor, 8 gig of Ram NT machines do you see everyday? (Got 3 Solaris setup like this right now). Its not a OS limitation, its more hardware (Intel)......
Cause I don't wanna come back down from this cloud... ~ Bush

[skycat 0]

You haven't seen the HUGE compaqs Proliant 7000 in our POP/Server Room, they are actually bigger, our biggest sun is a E420 with 2 processors and either 1 or 2 gigs of ram. (can't remember off the top of my head. Our sun shop is very streamlined with some E420s and E220s but mostly the Netra line of T1s and a few 1120

[PhreeZone 20]

Wegot a couple of Enterprise 10000's and some others floating around offsite. Saw the invoice for the one and passed out on the spot when I though of how many NT machines I could have got. We have a few older Himalya's here too so 8 processors is nothing to sneeze at, but I'm sorry... the 24 on the 10000 are just too much for my brain to handle. Cause I don't wanna come back down from this cloud... ~ Bush

[skycat 0]

hahah....yeah we had gotten a price quote for 2 of those, I about fell out of my chair. I couldn't beleive you actually have to go to special training for them or they won't sell it to you. All I was thinking was.."so that is why they got rid of the free snacks". The company ended up not getting them cause a co-worker and myself were able to prove that there was no need that an E420 with arrays and clustering was alot cheaper and could do the job just as well.

[MarkM 0]

Andy, Postgres is "production quality" but that doesn't mean it's the right database for your project. I'd recommend joining the Postgres mailing list and ask the people there specific questions about what you need your database to do and whether Postgres would be the right tool for the job. There are some things it'll be good at and other things it just won't do well.
As far as "getting what you paid for", I've been using MySQL in production systems for 4 years now without a single failure. I wouldn't use MySQL for everything(in fact, I use MS SQL as well), but I abuse the hell out of it and it has never failed me despite it being a zero cost database.

[Gingerbread 0]

And what has all this got to do with skydiving ???

[nacmacfeegle 0]

Nothing whatsoever, not single darn mention of beer, bigways, or BOOBIES.
verbal warning guys......

[MarkM 0]

You mean this isn't the Linux support board?
Hmm, wondered why there were so many posts about skydiving around here in the last 2 years...

[AndyMan 7]

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BTW, does anyone know if there's an Oracle for Linux?

Yes, Starting with 8i, Oracle runs under Linux.
The install is kinda ugly, a lot of the java tools don't work perfectly. 9i is much better, but more expensive.
Licenses start at $15,000 for 8i.
Which is why I'm looking at the RedHat Database. My client will be willing to do open source as long as there's a respectable company behind it. This rules out MySQL, but does allow for RHDB.
Oracle under linux will be the fallback if I chose to avoid RHDB. I'd just rather cut my bill by $15,000.
_Am
ICQ: 5578907
MSN Messenger: andrewdmetcalfe at hotmail dot com
Yahoo IM: ametcalf_1999

[MarkF 0]

Well I can see why you want to escape from Oracle. Invoices from Oracle tend to go along the lines of "give us all your money and two important body parts"...Nearly as bad as CA. Anyway...
For POWER processing you can't go too far wrong with OpenVMS and Rdb. I had to say that, I'm an OpenVMS bigot...:-)
I run Postgres on Slackware at home as the database for my IDS (snort) and it _seems_ OK-ish. It can get pretty badly bogged down when you're shipping large amounts of data around though. Other resource usage is about average for a database engine. (ie. Considerably less than what Oracle would use.) The API is pretty well non-cryptic but somewhat limited when you step outside SQL. (BLOB handling, for instance) Triggers and stored procedures just aren't handled AFAIK. (It's been a while since I upgraded Postgres...:-) ) There's also a nifty little forms driven front end called Pgaccess in the source package which tries to emulate M$ Access on a fairly rudimentry level. It isn't bad either...:-) I duno if it's in the RedHat rpm though.
You might also want to look into MySQL, it has pretty wide usage so there should be a fair bit of doco around the place. I haven't looked at it so I can't say first hand though.
There's also a version of Oracle for Linux available. If you try it out remember to get rid of MySQL / Postgres / etc. before you install Oracle. Wierd shit happens if you don't, giving you a valuable opportunity to learn what libraries go where and what uses 'em. Same deal if you get rid of Oracle and go to one of the others. Make good and sure that _all_ of Oracle is gone else you'll start seeing the dreaded weird shit happening...:-)
Ooroo
Mark F...

[PhillyKev 0]

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else you'll start seeing the dreaded weird shit happening

What an ending to an otherwise incomprehensible spew of techno babble . Is "the dreaded weird shit" to Linux as the "blue screen of death" is to NT?
cielos azules y cerveza fría
-Kevin

[GrumpySmurf 0]

Databases...eEEEEuuuu!!!
(Happy place, happy place, happy place!!)
Like was said here, ya gets what ya pay for. The risk with 'freeware' is that the developer could, on whim, up and change the ICD (Interface Control Doc) that outlines how the bloody thing will interface with the user and non-volitile storage - making any data gathered (your saved files) to that point useless. Plus there is the customer support issue. Part of that purchase price allows you to call in for help when the thing blows up and eats all your data at 2PM on some idle Tuesday. Then of course there are updates/bug fixes, since the developer doesn't gather any revenue from your purchase (or support contract) there is nothing to inspire them to fix any bugs or finish any missing features.
But if you think that the $$$ would be wasted on support or features you don't need, why waste it?

[Zennie 0]

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Is "the dreaded weird shit" to Linux as the "blue screen of death" is to NT?

No. Linux doesn't crash.
The "dreaded weird shit" is usually along the lines of something starting up and just going *poof* for no apparent reason. That or cratering with a cryptic error message that takes about a week to decipher.
"Zero Tolerance: the politically correct term for zero thought, zero common sense."

[nacmacfeegle 0]

"going *poof* "
Don't wanna say that to a Brit Zennster.....
Cya soon
D

[skycat 0]

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with a cryptic error message that takes about a week to decipher

At least it gives you a message and you don't have to reboot the whole box, you just have to restart certain processes. I always laughed at the NT guys they would have a server problem it was down for 4-5 hrs, we would have a sun server problem down max 30 min. (it might have been limping along, but damn it it was up.)