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Novell Releases PostgreSQL for NetWare
An anonymous reader writes "Ever since Oracle announced they wouldn't port 9i to NetWare, Novell has been scrambling to find an enterprise-capable DB. Now it looks like they're settling on PostgreSQL. This follows their decision to ship Apache as the default web server for NetWare 6. Linux aficionados might sneer at an old workhorse like NetWare, but it's got more than 80 million client licenses worldwide, and it ain't going anywhere anytime soon."
how has this company managed to get a hold of marketshare? why does it maintain these 80 million licenses? what edge does it offer? how does it differ?
-- -- --
Help my mini cause: My journal
Interesting how companies turn to open source only when they have no commercial alternative anymore.
yeah, I know, the next person to comment is going to say, " Who is this person? flamebait, etc, etc." At least I didn't use "u" and "r" and I still know how to spell and type unlike the current generation of IMers.
just migrated a netware fileserver to linux two days ago .. one less .. more to come ..
I thought Postgres would have too many limitations to be considered a healthy alternative to Oracle. eg 8k row sizes. Before people flame away. It has been a few years since I touched postgres, so this may be fixed by now.
and I used to have problems with database and index corruptions if it ever crashed...
lounge around on the blue couch
I never thought I'd see Postgre make a jump like this, I guess I'll have to reevaluate my thinking after seeing many places start taking hard stands behind MySQL.
I've been running under the assumption that even if MySQL was not entirely (or fractionally) superior to Postgre, it's increasing use in places like Yahoo alone would give it that momentum to roll over better, but less used DB's.
I've heard people swear on their souls that Postgre can stand up to MySQL, I look forward to finding out if this is really true. If it stands on it's own as a truly competitive product, congratulations to the Postgre guys. If however it's drawbacks are real, this could very well crush it forever.
http://about.me/paultenny
How many points (1-5/ insightful, interesting, funny) do I get for having a conversation with myself for thinking that I had the first post? I can hear it now, "Who the f*** is this guy?".
PostgreSQL is an open source project, not a product. The developers can port it to Windows in any way they want - it does run on Cygwin, which I use a lot for other tools. Why is it such a problem to use Cygwin? It's just a DLL, you wouldn't need the whole Cygwin environment on a production server, only on development machines.
You have no right to be angry at an open source project that is done by volunteers, usually in their spare time - if you really want a native Windows port, you can either help port it yourself or pay someone to do it.
I'm posing from a Novel site right now. Everyone here seems to be happy with netware for the most part. It works well with the corperate desktop (yes its windows), and like all OS' when its well maintained is pretty stable. The NDS tree had all the functionality that this site needs long before Microsoft's Active Directory was released.
The only reason anyone talks about moving away from Netware is application support. This porting of Open Source apps is a good thing for Novel. If they can ship enough applications, then people won't migrate away from Netware, and if they can increase market share then more people will develop on their platform.
This could also be a good thing for Open Source. With a new group of profesional developers working on the code they could make progress on those features that the Open Source product may be lacking. They will fix bugs.
If they are smart, they will keep the most of the code base the same. If they fork too far then they won't be able to include developments made from the community. Of course, that means fixes and features added by the Novel developers would be covered by the GPL and would be given back to the community.
This sounds like a good thing for both parties. Novel gets more software to run on their servers, making their servers more attractive to customers, selling more.
Open source gets any fixed and modifications that they make. Isn't this what open source (or free software) is about, you get access to the code for free to use any way you like, provided you give everyone access to the improvements you make.
Democracy isn't about no one telling you what to do. It's about everyone telling you what to do.
Erica, don't get pissed, get yourself some of THIS:
http://www.sapdb.org/
SAP's enterprise grade database management system is now open source!
No thanks -- I'll just pay Microsoft for SQL Server, and so will pretty much everyone else who needs a decent database server on Windows. (Or they will use Oracle, or DB2, etc.)
My point is that Postgres won't be taken seriously until there is a native Windows port that doesn't involve first installing a UNIX environment on top of Windows. I don't pick Windows web servers just so I can run a POSIX layer on top of them.
-- SlashChick
It's not completely stupid to shrug off 25% of the web server market. Which division of Microsoft do you work for? (sorry, your post just sounded like it came from a PR firm) Sure you want to try to work on as many systems as possible, but most companies and open source efforts aren't big enough to cover all the bases. Just ask Oracle.
No, you can hear them thinking "I'm glad the filters allow me to not see Anon Cowards who think they're clever." Granted, a clever AC is oxymoronic, but you get the point. And most people didn't see your post, or your self-mod, so they don't even know enough to not care. So I guess nobody really saw or cared about anything you do. Pity for me I happened to be slumming it.
Posts like yours are reason enough to log in/out to Slashdot even on computers I won't be using long. I miss my +2 filters...
Get information before posting - it does runn on Windows.
In two flavors: with cygwin and a new native port that has branched recently
Slashdot is for facts not badly informed trolls
realkiwi
My point is that yer a fuckin idiot. People like you are exactly the kind of people we don't want running linux. OMG I cannot run cygwin. I bet you can run wine though so you can play your solitare.
Oh! Whoops! Postgres doesn't run natively on Windows. [postgresql.org] This is COMPLETELY unacceptable. Their development environment and about half their servers, including the one allocated for this project, run on Windows. They went with Microsoft SQL Server, which was acceptable, but which ate almost a third of the budget for the project.
So you did not check the customer requirements against that what you recomended?
Wow...
You could probably simply add the cygwin DLL somewhere in your path if you didn't want a whole install.
I hate to break it to you man, but if you check you'll find Windows contains an awful lot of these "library" things that pretty much the whole system AND all your third party apps use!! Those bastards.
You're right. Pitty for YOU you were slumming it because nobody saw your reply either. jackass.
The comment here already sum up what intelligent things were to be said. So I'll go for the rest: it is crazy running a stable DB on an unstable system. Run the DB on linux, access it from your windows machine. No problem here, and at least the DB will stay up when the rest tumbles down in flames.
In my opinion, Scientology is a cult you should avoid.
Sayeth the original poster:
You are not responsible for their decisions. Severs and software have different capabilities, and are designed for different needs.
As for the rest of you comments, web servers, file servers, print servers, e-mail servers, and client software are NOT database servers. If you really think they are equivelant, you need to turn in your geek card.
Karma: Food Fight (Mostly affected by Date Plate).
If you're looking for a nice RDBMS for Netware, iAnywhere Solutions has SQL Anywhere, which is available for a number of platforms including Netware. I'm not exactly sure how it stacks up against PostgreSQL, but I've had a lot of success using it in the past (on Linux and Windows, admittedly).
Not that I work for iAnywhere Solutions or anything. *cough*
-j
If you do a Google search for "MySQL vs. PostgreSQL, you'll get a lot of hits. Here are a few that seem to be pretty informative (if not slightly dated):
here
here
here
here
here
here (not really a comparison, but read this article and the linked Postgres article for more info)
In my personal experience, Postgres has historically been the database more prepared for larger, more multi-threaded applications.
Obviously, there have been debates about which are faster in various different applications. To be honest, I have no hard data, nor have I stretched them either to their capacity, but as a user and casual developer, they are both fast enough for me not to notice.
What's inarguable exciting can be directly quoted from MySQL's own comparison of the two (listed above):
[B]oth products are continually evolving. We at MySQL AB and the PostgreSQL developers are both working on making our respective databases as good as possible, so we are both a serious alternative to any commercial database.
moto411.com
Without sounding like I'm flamebaiting you, have you used many databases in your career? Do you know from experience the pros and cons of each? What drawbacks are you talking about? PostgreSQL is in a completely different class than MySQL. One is meant to be a full-fledged RDBMS, the other is meant to act as a super fast, network-aware DBM file on steroids. Each has their place, and they are more complementary than not. They can exist together, but you should never try to use one in place of the other. Get both, test both. Find the right tool for the job without listening to fanboy hype.
Oh, wait. IHBT. Never mind...
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
MS is shrugging off 75% of the web server market by not supporting Linux with SQL Server, doesn't seem to be hurting them too badly... :)
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
But a website with the words "News For Nerds" in its slogan wouldn't be the best place for it.
-Feeding trolls for 10 years running
Karma: Non-Heinous
ROFL! Tell me another one!
Well, it's all relative. It would appear that the Postgres developers don't take Windows seriously. And it looks like their opinion matters more in this regard than yours.
If Postgres doesn't meet your needs -- "native", capable, windows database -- you (obviously) know what your choices are. No need to get furious. Enjoy SQL Server.
This may be 'old stuff', becuase the last time I've used novell was years ago in the 3.x and 4.x days... But there is one thing I've never seen since.
Novell has the filesystem with the best undelete I've ever seen. When a file is deleted, it's really just marked 'ready for deletion when necessary' and becomes invisible (sort of hidden), and it's diskspace is marked 'free/unused'.
With a special undelete tool, a user can later undelete any of his files, as long as they haven't been overwritten. And the OS minimizes that. The lower the diskspace utilization, the longer that is. In practice, it's easily more than a couple of days, often weeks.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
My impression is that PostgreSQL has a reputation for being slower due to the way that every command is a transaction. Un-clued-in programmers will send a thousand INSERT transactions, instead of a single transaction (containing a thousand INSERTs). Using transactions properly, PGSQL kicks da casbah.
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
"a database larger than MySQL could capably handle"...
There are users with over 50 million records, and I personally know a company that had nearly 4 million tables.
Why, exactly, was MySQL not 'capably handling' a mere 3 million records?
"So you did not check the customer requirements against that what you recomended (sp)?"
Actually, it went something like this:
-- They asked me for a recommendation of a database that could handle 3 million records.
-- I suggested Postgres.
-- They said, "Oh, but the server it will be running on is Windows."
-- D'oh!
I mean, it was a rather casual thing. But the whole problem was that I have no choice but to suggest a commercial database server if the database server platform is Windows. Why are the Postgres people porting to Netware before Windows? I don't know -- I'm not on their team, but it seems a rather strange choice to me.
I figured I'd get the typical "why don't you just format and run Linux" reply as well, so I might as well add that the server was already running a Windows application, and they wanted to just use that one as a database server since it had some extra CPU and memory.
It's just frustrating that the Postgres team decides to port to a platform that is now relatively obscure (Netware) instead of a platform that is one of the top 3 in the database market (Windows.) It seems to be a case of "maybe if we ignore this platform, it will just go away." That attitude is disappointing, especially when it comes from a company that I'd like to support.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
Far from "ignoring" the situation, the developers are developing a native win32 port as we speak.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
I've had MySQL databases with more than 3 million records. Many more, in fact. MySQL works fine if the databases are designed properly. Are you sure that you spec'ed out the job properly? Are you familiar with MySQL? You weren't sure what the client needed before you bid the job? What?
You kinda sound like an MS shill is all...
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Great to see Novell is still alive and kicking, they've really taken a beating over the last decade.
I read the other week that they're cashed up with a billion in the bank or something.
Anyways, I love NetWare - rock solid, efficient and fast. Remember the story here about the NetWare box a uni discovered behind a wall? It had been running for years.
Windows file sharing and its' clones just suck, plain and simple. Don't knock NetWare until you've played around with it and/or seen a network setup properly with it.
NDS rocks hard.
A common (but rather misguided) complaint is that NetWare has crappy multiprocessor support - because one CPU is at 95% utilisation and the other is idle. Ever considered there's no need to use the other CPU(s) if the first isn't maxed out? =]
Now, I don't profess to be an expert on it (I'm not a CNA, CNE or whatever the other one is), but from my experience with using it I just like it, and if you have a network of Windows boxes, use NetWare for file/print serving and whatever else!
I really like PostgreSQL, and it's nice to see that it's gaining some acceptence. In particular, I like the way the developers develop. I really find it interesting reading the mailing lists (pgsql-general and pgsql-hackers).
It's interesting to note how much MySQL seems to be improving as well. I don't follow that very closely, but appearently they're filling in those "missing features" at a rapid pace (though it's not like an RDBMS is about feature count). I still like PostgreSQL more, but it's nice to see that both are improving so much.
Jeff
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
And through the time I saw how Microsoft did everything possible to make sure they will not cooperate with Netware servers. All the time since the win95, they tried to kill them off. I remember the FUD they spread, and how they tried to brag with features that Netware had some 15 years before them.
I just wish, they have had better marketing. I'd NDS was way better than Active Directory and who ever forgot few years about their installed Netware servers, knows what it means reliable. Hopefully they will make a comeback in the small business once Microsoft monopoly breaks up.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
I don't see why anyone would sneer at Netware. If you've got to administer several Windows machines, Netware is by far the best server for the job.
I don't think I'll hear a single arguement that Windows makes a better server... so what else?
Unix servers for Windows clients don't work very well. For one, MS' native solutions aren't very good, and I haven't seen any client-side programs that can rival the Netware client. It's secure, it integrates nicely, it uses strong encryption (RSA) to encrypt all network traffic, etc.
A Netware server may not be too much like Unix, but it's a hell of a lot better than a Windows Server... and if you've got to have Windows clients, you've got to make some sacrifices.
Netware even has tools to allow Unix compatibility (server-side), so I can't see any reason for an Sys Admin to sneer at Novell.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Where does one have to go to find normal people?
Outside.
about the only reply fitting an anonymous coward calling another anonymous coward "anonymous coward" is, "it takes one to know one".
Well, tough, either port it yourself or you buy Microsoft SQL Server, or you switch to Linux. The world doesn't owe you a free database server, much less one for Windows.
If anything, I think too many open source projects are ported to Windows. That eats up a lot of effort, supports Microsoft, and the users would be better off switching to a free OS in the long run anyway.
Your angry at a bunch of hackers because they haven't ported a software package for free? Sheesh! As if you have some god given right to run Postgres on windows or something... Sure it would be nice to have a Windows native port, but come on, if you have such a big problem with it, maybe you should shush up and join the porting effort.
:-)
I don't think it was even the core Postgres team that ported to Netware (I'm on the mailing lists, seems like I would have seen something about it). It was probly Novell that did (or is doing) the porting. So go get pissed at Microsoft for not porting Postgres to Windows
Well, Firebird is not considered to be at 1.0 yet, but it should meet your needs. I have done some basic development on it and I like it. But not being at 1.0, I would be a little cautious at this point.
;)
Note also that there are clustering solutions for Interbase/Firebird. Of course all databases have some problems like storing all their field names in upper case by default (Firebird), or making it unnecessarily difficult to drop tables (PostgreSQL) or case sensitive default behaviour ot table names (MySQL)
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I would agree they will be better off switching, but having applications available
on Windows as well helps make switching possible.
If you can get people using free software on windows, then suggest changing to
Linux and being able to keep using the same software, changing over is a much
smoother process (and a lot easier to make the case for).
I'm currently working on moving as much as possible of our systems to use free
or at least cross platform alternatives.
The long term plan is to switch to Linux, but we don't have the resources and
not all the applications I plan to use are mature enough to make the change
immediately, but I plan to be ready to go once the approach a stable level.
420 Million.
The Flying Boy Add
Don't know if the other clips on this page are as good, but they look well made.
I wonder why you don't see a bigger push from Novel about their products. I don't remember seend a Novel add recently, yet these clips look very profesional.
Democracy isn't about no one telling you what to do. It's about everyone telling you what to do.
Then port it your own fucking self, asshole. If you don't like it, get a goddamn refund.
Large database servers are often run on a dedicated machine, so for something like PostgreSQL, I think there is no need to port it to Windows--bringing up a dedicated database server under Linux is an excellent way to start switching to open source.
Often, the cross-platform compromises of supporting something on both Windows and Linux can be harmful to the software in question, making it more complex or limiting features. I think Apache 2.0's thread support is a good example: it causes a lot of extra work and is arguably completely unnecessary for Linux.
Are we shure that Nowell will release the source?
If I remeber well the Postgres's licence is BSD so.......
I remember around 7 years ago we had a lan with novel netware installed. cant remember the version.. I think 4. something. And it was pretty decent. It was stable hardly any crashes and we personally had no issued. Have mostly been on solaris/linux since then.... I really dont know how they are now
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
Its interesting that whenever anyone quotes a MySQL vs Postgres link and includes the PHP article the referenced above, they rarely realize that the author of that article (and one of the initial developers of Sourceforge) wrote an article 4 months later that Revisiting the MySQL vs Postgresql Implementation. The original quoted article ended up recommending MySQL while the later article clearly showed that PostgreSQL blew away MySQL under a high load. This research is what made Sourceforge convert from an initial MySQL implementation to a PostgreSQL one.
As a sidenote, I am currently building a pgdiff tool that allows users to create alter scripts for migrating between schemas. This is useful for shops where there may be a development/staging/production versions of the database...
and why have 4 million tables?
who shot the cat in the hat to experiment is insane
nay :)
- Availability
- Scaleability
- Secure data
- performance
AvailabilityIs it possible to create a mirror system to ensure that if one database goes down, there is another database waiting to kick in. Does postgresql contain this mirroring functionality?
Scaleability
If the load increases, is it possible to add new servers / add more processors and make postgresql benefit from it?
Secure data
Backup plans, what options exists for backing up the database tables. Can it be done on a running system, that is, does it support backing up a system where data is changing while backing up? Can you use tape devices? Can you use multiple tape devices to speed up the process? Does it support warm restores, as in keeping the database online while performing restores?
Performance
If I want to speed up the data transfer between the disks containing the data and the database, can I fragment the data between disks, can I use a raid setup? Does it rely on the underlying OS to save its data or does postgresql use raw devices?
You can probably solve some of the issues using the capabilities of the OS, but the data can't ofcourse be destroyed or be out of sync etc. Has anybody made any research in this subject?
Gusy, hmmm.. while you're all tied up in a nice flamewar between the two camps... you know that MySQL is ported to NetWare, too, didn't you? It's officially supported, in fact, done by some Novell engineers as far as I know.
Strange that only PostgreSQL got mentioned in the headline.
Sigged!
There is a new beta period just been announced for the latest version here... It has a lot of feature improvements that the non-postgres fans moan about (i.e column drop)
As cunning as a fox, which has just been appointed professor of cunning at Oxford University. http://www.kinlan.co
"storing all their field names in upper case by default".
Err, AFAIK that is what the default for unquoted identifier names should be, at least that what FIPS specify, and most other RDBMS conform to, other than PostgreSQL and some of the java databases.
Pervasive Software is an offshoot of Novell, that took btrieve and developed it into a rather good database engine, then stuck an SQL layer on top. I always liked btrieve - it was simple, low level, performed like a rocket, and just sat there and did it's job reliably. Very like Netware, in fact. While Windows NT was drawing pretty pictures on the screen, Netware 3.12 was just sitting in the corner being the best server it could be.
*sneers*
A few years ago I worked with Oracle and it was only easy to drop a column which was at the end of a row.
If we wanted to drop a column somewhere in the middle, we also had to write a script to query the database minus the deleted column, then delete the old table and rename the new table.
made a decent client32 for linux (gui based). Yes, I do know about ncpfs, but I'm talking about a full client with all the same utilties and services I can access on MacOS or Windows. I have scoured the net, but all I find are just goofy frontends to ncpfs, which still doesn't speak NDS [The Original "Directory Services"] all that well. It sure as hell can't speak to NW 5.x or 6.x! There definitely was some promise with Caldera, but that project has since hit the wall, especially now that they are SCO again. Well maybe someday...
So I came in to this job and they asked me to look at the network and make it better. I looked at the servers..some Netware and some NT. I upgraded the Netware servers to the latest versions and that made the network better. I upgraded the NT boxes to Linux and that made the network better. Since I'm out of magic, I love it when the NOS application people throw some of their magic my way (porting PostgreSQL to Netware).
ps...and I still don't need a &*(%ing mouse on my server!
Yeah, but you know, the Free Software/OSS community can also use bait-and-switch...
If you are running postgres on solaris, you should patch it with another qsort. This can boost your performance quite dramatically. (This is NOW, as in 7.2). Although this is more of a flaw in Solaris than anything else...
Ahhh could be that MySQL is not to be found anywhere on the SDK lists, which list such things as Perl5, PHP, PostgreSQL, Apache, etc?
If it was Novell supported (just having a couple of engineers port something does not make if official/supported;at one time oracle had a FreeBSD port done, but you could not get it outside of oracle) I think it would be listed along with the other supported apps.
I also tried google, but nothing came up on a Novell site about MySQL for NetWare (in the top 20 or 30 that is).
BWP
Oracle kicks ass, Mysql is starting to catch up. We currently use a large mysql db in a university setting, roll backs are brilliant and save the day during bad crashed... as for Novell, its dying.. unfortunately its slowly. Its on its way out at this Uni, not fast enough.. Im a Unix (solaris) /NT interoperability consultant and Novell has 0 chance of surviving (about the same as geoworks) without its own bootloader its only DOS+
Arcserver - The best backup solution available today.
Arcserve - The crappiest piece of software ever written.
At least they didn't use Btrieve/Pervasive POS!
Btrieve is the bane of my existense.
I've only used the free Sybase 11.0.3.3 server, but as I remember it has a 1932-byte limit per row. You get a warning if varchars exceed this length, and a hard error if fixed-length columns do.
Sybase and MS SQL Server used to be the same code. Did MS do away with the row limit?
And if they did, they would be guilty of what we accuse MS of doing all the time, denigrating a technology without understanding it. Besides, Isn't Unix is older than Novell?
Novell has lots of things done right in it. Self tuning as it runs, stabillity, scale-ability, ease (well, maybe not as easy as Unix) of management, flexabillity.
While improvments could be made to Novell (and Linux), Novell hasn't seemed to completely fallen into the trap of features over stabillity/performance. Although I have to say that GroupWise needs work. Try moving a mail box sometime. Or fixing a broken message database. And it is a major pain that the Admin is dealing with what is basically a black box when it comes to GroupWise.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Btrieve is the biggest, worst, most awful, satanic, abhorent piece of shit there ever was. And, Pervasive SQL 2000 or whatever it is called this week is still the same old worthless Btrieve piece of shit.
In fact, because they are tied to btrieve applications like Arcserve and Peachtree Accounting and a dozen other specialty apps also SUCK!!!!
Later, when I calm down, I tell you how I really feel.
When writing "it's", always read it out loud as "it is".
eg:
Linux aficionados might sneer at an old workhorse like NetWare, but it is got more than 80 million client licenses worldwide
SQL Server 7.0 and 2000 now have an 8K page size, and the max. row size is 8096 bytes. With v7.0 the Sybase code base has been eliminated (meaning they didn't deliberately port any old code, but there are probably lots of similarities in the new code base)
A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's an erection for?
The novell guys I used to work with thought that "abend" (abnormal end) was a normal thing for all servers. When you put groupwise and the master NDS tree on the same server, lights out.... It's been a while since I have had the pleasure, but there was an awfull lot of rebooting involved for loading/unloading NLM's. A guy mentioned "FS13" being up for 4 years without a problem, that impressive, but I bet if I built a windows box, and hid it in the corner with nobody connected to it, it could stay up even longer. You have to compare apples to apples......
MySQL is faster when doing simple selects. If you don't have any joins, etc., MySQL is faster. PostgreSQL requires some tuning to get it at a reasonable speed.
HOWEVER, once you get it going, PostgreSQL is pretty slick. If speed is really a problem, get a bigger box. Our main database server for our production system is a dual-1GHz machine with 1 GB RAM. It's not that fast a machine, it was a few grand, and it worked nicely for the past year.
If we outgrow it, we'll go and buy more iron.
It is MUCH cheaper to spend an extra $3000-$5000 on server hardware than it is to have 3-5 programmers spend an extra month on the project to work around MySQL's limitations.
If you ever move beyond trivial database needs, MySQL will kill you. Unless you are really strapped for cash (i.e. this is a hobby site that is going to have enough traffic that performance matters), you're better off going with PostgreSQL. If you find that you need the advanced options, you've got em. If you don't? You'll have 75%-95% of the performance anyways.
Alex
ASE 12.5+ (maybe 12) has the ability to go up to 16K row sizes (with the new larger page sizes) although you would be hard pressed to find a practical instance in which you *need* a row that big -- provided your relations are properly normalized.
;)). So you could easily hit the row cap with gobs of text (or a single image!). Now that the cap is gone you shouldn't see any problems. Aside from TEXT you should never hit the limit anyway unless you design horrible tables. :)
t ml But in short, know your data and you should have no problems.
The main problem that *existed* in PostreSQL was that TEXT (and other unstructured datatypes) live on-row in PostgreSQL (and MySQL, but I'll get to that later
Note that TEXT (IMAGE, etc.) data lives off-row in Sybase and MS SQL (and Oracle allows you to specify both I think!). This is very nice since you can keep your rows smaller (better cache hit ratio) and it also allows for a much higher probability that your TEXT data will be in a contiguous block saving expensive disk seeks.
Re: MySQL the Gemini table type has (IIRC) an easily hit max row size if you use text columns. Of course, no one uses Gemini over InnoDB so it is a non-issue.
InnoDB rows live on a HUGE 16KB pages (recompile MySQL to change; yuck!) which means the max row size in older versions is a function of page size (PAGE_SIZE / 2 - STUFF). In later versions this was removed, although limits still exist: http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/InnoDB_restrictions.h
Thanks,
--
Matt
As I user (not administrator) I guess I can't sneer at Netware, but I can grumble a lot. It seems like a great system if everybody uses windows. I'm at a university where the infrastucture is all windows boxes connecting to netware servers. We scientists can buy whatever we want, however, and since we are intelligent and creative people, that means a lot of us have macs ;-) For a university that doesn't officially support macs, our department sure has a lot of them (maybe 20%) and our IT guy (who doesn't know a heck of a lot about macs) makes an effort to support us anyway.
Now, for some reason, Novell farms out the mac client developement to a company called Prosoft Enginerring. The OS 9 IPX client was alright, though it lacks some of the features of the windows client. But the new OS X IP client is AWFUL. It behaves like an early beta release, but they call it a 1.0.2 release. I mean, it really is terrible. Kernel panics, the need for frequent rebbots, etc. I've emailed the tech support people at prosoft, and it seems they are really trying to get it to work properly, but they are a long way off. Which leaves the growing number us OS X users in our department with crap. I read about this native file access option and came running to our IT guy and begged him to install it, but he doesn't want to for reasons that are beyond me. He said stuff about security (my boyfriend says appletalk over IP is secure) and losing the ability to push things through the clients (he never pushes anything to the mac users anyway).
So unless you're a windows user, it really sucks to have a netware server. What is the client situation for linux users? Is there a client? Is it this bad?
I will agree with Valpis.
4 million tables? WTF!
3.11 was really stable, but it wasn't terribly scalable in terms of the users database. NDS, introduced in 4.x, made it an amazing, seamless enterprise file-print platform. Novell to this day still has the best filesystem ACLs. I learned Novell's first and I was pretty much amazed that anything as bad as UNIX and NT ACLs were even usable by anyone.
My gut feeling is that Novell should have dropped Netware-the-OS and instead ported Netware-file-print-services as a userspace application that could be run on more capable multipurpose operating systems, much the same way of Samba.
What killed Netware wasn't that it didn't do its primary purpose (file-print) better than anything else, but that it was a *horrible* operating system -- 4.xx relied on cooperative multitasking, had no protected memory and couldn't host applications very well and was hard to develop for. The 90s brought a huge surge for quickly written or ported apps that could be bolted onto "the server" -- Netware had few apps and those it had often ran poorly.
Places that would have kept NW file/print but didn't because they needed a more flexible OS could have migrated to a unix flavor and kept running a netware file/print.
Whoa there padre! Firebird not at 1.0? Where have you been since March? Firebird 1.0 Release Announcement
I've still got clients running 3.12 as a basic print and file server. Some servers have uptime of well over a year. It might be old an clunky but it still works.
-ted
We sneer at windoze, not Novell. Novell is rock solid. Windows 2000 ripped off their directory structure , so they must have been doing something right. Besides, Console1 runs on Linux so you can administrate your netware network on your favorite Linux build. Oh, but their new logo with the long stepping geek is pretty stupid.
I hope your customer's site is better than
www.shakadesign.com
Wrong. If they released a Novell version of RedHat (or Linux in general), then they would not be able to charge for it because it would have to be an Open Source OS (GLP licensing). As for the NDS support for redhat, I have not worked with it, but from what I hear, it works well.
Wrong. Just because the software is GPL (not GLP) doesn't mean you can't charge for it. Red Hat charges for their product don't they?
If only Novell hadn't abandoned the SuperNOS initiative a few years ago. If they hadn't, and Netware was able to run Linux binaries today, this wouldn't be news, this would be expected.
For those that don't know what I am talking about, at one point in the distant past, Novell bought the source code to the orginal AT&T Unix and announced plans to merge Unix and Netware into what they called 'SuperNOS'. It would have let Unix programs run on Netware servers. The project was dropped a few years later. My guess is that the old-guard Novell engineers refused to consider Netware as an application running on top of another OS. Eventually, they sold the Unix source code to SCO, who was bought by Caldera, who changed their name to SCO. Confused yet?
Sad. If only they had stuck with it, Novell would be in a much better position today.
(Factual corrections welcome. You're gonna post anyway, you might as well have my blessing on it)
It sounds like Novell has enough expertise to make a better vxfs than Veritas, and a better SAN/NAS device than EMC.
I wonder why they never capitalized on these markets.
If you would use an Access database for your project, then MySQL *may* be a good choice for your project. Think of MySQL as a faster, feature poor Access database. Think of Access as a slower MySQL feature rich database. Either case, both stick at concurrent (multi-user) access.
If the answer is no, then you should be looking at using PostgreSQL or a commercial database offering.
They're working on MySQL4 too..
it(Novell) ain't going anywhere anytime soon
:-)
Boy, ya know that statement taken out of context sure speaks volumes, eh?
You can't possibly be calling Netware unstable. If you are, here's some advice: lay off the crack.
-- Jim
Eek! Sorry ... wasn't paying attention ... you were referring to running it on *Windows* ...
/me removes foot (and crack-pipe) from mouth
Ok, i'll save you the trouble of responding...
-- Jim
Linux has, grand total worldwide... abso-freakin-lutely ZERO client licenses!!!!!!
my 4.11 server has over 700 days uptime
The company I work for has been a Netware user since the 2x days. Four out of the dozen or so surviving Netware boxes exist solely to serve up Btrieve apps.
Not a single one of the upgrade paths for those apps runs on Pervasive/Netware. All of them have been rewritten for M$ SQL. A handful of them offer Oracle as an alternative. Looks live the developers have been hitting the M$ Kool Aid pretty hard.
As many times as I've cussed Btrieve bad I may actually grow to miss it in time.
Now Darkserve is another issue all together.
Really?
When Nimda, Code Red and the other viruses plagued every other network on the planet, guess whos networks were NOT?
That's right, our Netware and Groupwise-based networks didn't even flinch.
Netware is extremely stable, extremely secure and more manageable than any other NOS on the planet. Those benefits, taken as a whole, are something that NO OTHER NOS can claim.
-- Jim
Oracle, the abusive tech monopoly of the new generation
Licensing discussions going on.
I think both will be supported.
Huh? ;-)
mydb=# drop table <tablename>;
Works fine for me... I've only been using PGSQL for a year or so, is there something I've been missing? If anything, dropping tables is a bit too easy.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The reason that PostgreSQL has a smaller share of the DB market than mySQL, despite being a more serious application, is obvious:
It has an ugly, unpronounceable name.
I get a warm, fuzzy feeling inside whenever I initiate a connection to a mySQL server. But when I go to the PostgreSQL site, I encounter a recording on the front page with an example of how to pronounce its name.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
You know, PostgreSQL has been ported to Windows. You have to use cygwin, but it's stable and runs ok. See here for details.
PostgreSQL stores its long column values off-row too.
Eck...i can think of so many instances where having text inline (within the row) will just not do. Myself, coming for MS SQL world, this really is a big change to what I am used to...how does this impact performance from an indexing standpoint? I have visions of 200 concurrent users updating text (blobs) all over the place, causing a crap load of page splits. Suppose what ever the impact is, some of it could be offloaded by vertically partitioning the table, but as a dev, that is something I don't want to think about when i am in design/protype mode. Thoughts?
"Simon Says, Fuck You" - George Carlin
my 5.x server has 724 days and counting.
Try managing a "real" application without them. You end up with hacks in all shapes and flavors to make up for what the db lacks.
I guess if you never used them, then you don't know what you are missing.
I do however agree with most everyone that mySQL fits a certain roll, but what would that be? My 2 cents
"Simon Says, Fuck You" - George Carlin
For what it's worth, IIRC, the same programmer that has been working with the PostgreSQL guys also mentioned that they've been working on MySQL.
It was also noted that MySQL is being done because it's so well known/prevalent but that PostgreSQL is being worked on because they want a true RDBMS work horse.
Makes perfect sense to me.
Obviously you can't do research and should not be in the business of recommending software.
If you had done your research, you would have found SAP DB, a high-end GPL database that SAP was built on, that is supported by SAP, runs on WinXX AND has an Oracle emulation layer.
Oh, and it also has nice GUI tools ala MS SQL...
As others have said, if you want Postgres to run on WinXX, either contribute code or $$$.
Chris.
-- I don't have a cool sig.
Yes, Really.
... these were HTTP server viruses, not OS viruses.
You mean, when Nimda, Code Red, and other HTTP SERVER viruses plagued "every other network on the planet"
Even so: Big deal. Amiga wasn't "plagued" by these either. Neither were OSes running Apache... nor were appropriately patched IIS servers. Between my full-time and part-time jobs, I have 32 HTTP servers that I maintain, and 18 different workgroups that I maintain. None of these were "plagued" by these worms... Guess what network operating systems they run... Give you a hint, the 2nd sylabile doesn't rhyme with "hell".
I will agree with you that Novell is stable, and has some good management features. Then again, Windows 2000 with active directory has more of both. Don't get me wrong, I still use Linux and BSD on my file and web servers, but all of my workkstations get 2k, and they have a 2k DC. My SMB network is managable, fast, supports the most current hardware, and, with the exception of some users' workstations, has not once crashed over the last 2 years.
Security... well, "Yeeeeeaaahh... I'm gonna have ta... go ahead, and disagree..." Novell really doesn't have any sort of an edge over anything else on the market other than windows. Don't think so? Check bugtraq or securityfocus.
Novell was certainly something when it was the big kid on the block, but that time has passed... I stand by my HA-HA-HA about Novell not going anywhere anytime soon.
I guess my clients would be close to that if their power/UPS systems were as reliable.
-ted
Load distribution.
This company tracks visitor statistics among other things and experiences an extremely high volume of hits. Many users were high enough volume themselves to warrant their own set of tables, while low volume users were still grouped together.
Has any one used Pervasive SQL?
The article didn't say, so does anyone know why Novell didn't choose Interbase/Firebird instead of PostgreSQL?
Border Manager is old and broken. The real talent left that project about 5 years ago. It has since moved here. There is a broken remnant of what BM became called ichain. Though it is not marketed as such, it uses the same code base.
I don't think I'll hear a single arguement that Windows makes a better server... so what else?
I really want to agree with you ... but ... WHY does it take 10 minutes to log in?
I've worked three places with NT clients connecting to the network via Novell login. Same thing at each place. What is it doing??? For 10 minutes??? At least Windows networking lets me start working sometime before lunch.
Why maintain a port themselves when someone else will develop a product? It's just extra work for little or no money.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Looking at the PostgreSQL license, it is unrestrictive:
http://www3.us.postgresql.org/docs/faq-english.
As a developer that tends to integrate a lot of open source packages into commercial software, I'd comment that we only use packages with licenses like this. The GPL is a killer for anyone wanting to integrate open source into their commercial applications:
https://order.mysql.com/
You beat me to referencing the later and much more important link on the PHP Builder site. The first link is pretty much irrelevant without the superceding conclusions of the content of the 2nd.
It's funny how MySQL AB just hasn't had time to write a multi-user benchmark. Based on the age of the link they haven't had time for a long time now. Yet they say benchmarking is important? Give me a break!
I just completed my own multi-user benchmark tests and the great performance of PostgreSQL vs the not so great performance of MySQL with InnoDB was quite revealing. PostgreSQL's performance was stunning! MySQL with InnoDB hit the wall as I cranked up the number of sessions.
Maybe the reason MySQL AB hasn't "had time" to create a multi-user benchmark is that it really IS hard to come up with one that shows them in a good light. The reason they haven't come up with such a benchmark is that it wouldn't survive the scrutiny of the open source community. If you need ACID compliance and you need performance then beware. InnoDB isn't "native" support for transactions and despite MySQL AB's claims there isn't any atomicity in locking. In fact, there really isn't any row level locking with MySQL... At least the InnoDB web site is more accurate (and honest) and explains that locking is a next-key value locking mechanism that is indexed based. MySQL AB's claim to support row level locking is deceptive.
I haven't found any queries which perform well on MySQL and don't perform equally well on PostgreSQL. But I have found the opposite... a lot of queries that run just fine on PostgreSQL but not on MySQL. MySQL doesn't perform complex joins or subqueries but I guess you could work a little harder and code around these limitations to get some decent performance. But why bother when you can just use PostgreSQL with its full set of features and its absolutely stunningly good performance?
Seems like lots of folks are stuck on past impressions with PostgreSQL version 6.5 and haven't kept up. Those who have not looked at PostgreSQL lately should throw all their prior conclusions out the door and compare the current state of MySQL vs. the current state of PostgreSQL. Ignore the MySQL AB marketing hype and see for yourself.
When you delete a file, NOS/NDS, flags the file as "deleted", and timestamps it. As you reuse disk space, the space used by the oldest deleted file (regadless of owner) is removed first. Once the system uses any part of a deleted file, you cannot recover it.
Windows 95's Recycle Bin does exactly that. Mac OS version 7.0 had something a bit more primitive: whenever a file is copied onto a disk, if it won't fit, the shell "empties the trash" (purges all deleted files on all mounted volumes) first.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I see that now for the 'large object' although you are forced to use non-standard SQL in order to facilitate. It would be nice if it was invisible.
It does not work with TEXT data though.
Thanks,
--
Matt
Maybe now I can convince upper management that PostgreSQL is indeed ready for enterprise use?
We're using Sun hardware with an Oracle backend for a B2B website hosting ~70 simultaneous users. We also just spent around $300K (not including Oracle's $30K per year licensing fee) for _new_ Sun hardware, networking gear and Oracle 9i.
Why in God's name did we do it? Well, part of it was the fact that management with absolutely no UNIX or application development experience went to the vendors and said, tell us what we need to buy. God forbid they do profiling of the existing system to see whether or not they actually need to buy new equipment!
The other reason? We're not early adopters. That's the response I got when I asked why we didn't just deploy on commodity PC hardware running one of the free UNIX distros. with a PostgreSQL or MySQL backend. Would have cost us several orders of magnitude less money...
Well, we currently use Novel NetWare so maybe attitudes will change?
Check out the MySQL AB site at: http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/MySQL-PostgreSQL_bench marks.html
Quoting from this page: "We know of two benchmark tests that claim that PostgreSQL performs better than MySQL Server. These both where multi-user tests, a test that we here at MySQL AB haven't had time to write and include in the benchmark suite, mainly because it's a big task to do this in a manner that is fair to all databases."
It's funny how MySQL AB just hasn't had time to write a multi-user benchmark. Based on the age of the link they haven't had time for a long time now. Yet they say benchmarking is important? Give me a break!
I just completed my own multi-user benchmark tests and the great performance of PostgreSQL vs the not so great performance of MySQL with InnoDB was quite revealing. PostgreSQL's performance was stunning! MySQL with InnoDB hit the wall as I cranked up the number of sessions.
Maybe the reason MySQL AB hasn't "had time" to create a multi-user benchmark is that it really IS hard to come up with one that shows them in a good light. The reason they haven't come up with such a benchmark is that it wouldn't survive the scrutiny of the open source community. If you need ACID compliance and you need performance then beware. InnoDB isn't "native" support for transactions and despite MySQL AB's claims there isn't any atomicity in locking. In fact, there really isn't any row level locking with MySQL... At least the InnoDB web site is more accurate (and honest) and explains that locking is a next-key value locking mechanism that is indexed based. MySQL AB's claim to support row level locking is deceptive. Here's what the InnoDB manual says, "InnoDB does the row level locking so that when it searches or scans an index of a table, it sets shared or exclusive locks on the index records in encounters. Thus the row level locks are more precisely called index record locks."
I haven't found any queries which perform well on MySQL that don't perform equally well on PostgreSQL. But I have found the opposite... queies that run just fine on PostgreSQL but not on MySQL. MySQL doesn't perform complex joins or subqueries but I guess you could work a little harder and code around these limitations to get some decent performance. But why bother when you can just use PostgreSQL with its full set of features and its absolutely stunningly good performance?
Seems like lots of folks are stuck on past impressions with PostgreSQL version 6.5 and haven't kept up. Those who have not looked at PostgreSQL lately should throw all their prior conclusions out the door and compare the current state of MySQL vs. the current state of PostgreSQL. Ignore the MySQL AB marketing hype and see for yourself.
Well, since MySQL can keep up with Oracle, are you suggesting that Oracle has "not so great performance" and that PostgreSQL can outperform Oracle?
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
This inserts 1 million X's into a text field:
This feature has been in PostgreSQL since April, 2001.
Cool, I stand corrected then. IMHO it should be added to the docs TEXT datatype because that was the first place I looked to come up with my on/off row analysis:p hp?datatype -character.html
:)
l argeobj ects.html
http://www.postgresql.org/idocs/index.
Maybe just a short blurb stating it is TOASTed.
And the docs here:
http://www.postgresql.org/idocs/index.php?
Is what pointed to the alternate syntax for the large object support. So does the pg_class silently use the large_object syntax to stuff TEXT columns?
Also this:
Tip: There are no performance differences between these three types, apart from the increased storage size when using the blank-padded type.
Led me to beleive that the TEXT was stored on-row, because there will be a hair bit more I/O to find the TEXT data, which does not seem to be indicated.
Thanks,
--
Matt
As a developer that develops things to be as database independant as is possible, I always keep things like that in a separate table. If I have a field that would be storing text, a blob, a clob, etc., I just automatically place it in a separate table. I know that it can't hurt performance too much like that and I can likely measure the worst case performance impact anyway.
I have no sig, does anyone have one to spare?
...frankly, I am disgusted and disappointed to not have a Free alternative in between those two.
No, you are disgusted and disappointed to not have a free alternative in between those two.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I agree with an above commenter that the discussion has been extremely sensible.
There is an issue with Oracle that affects the the choice of a database for a new system: Larry Ellison is widely reputed to be psychologically unbalanced. He is a billionaire who doesn't have to work, and that also affects everything that he does.
If you can use PostgreSQL, then you have the advantage of not dealing with factors that could cause your database system to become much less attractive in the future. Companies like Novell, WordPerfect, Corel, Powerbuilder and many others have been remarkably self-destructive. They were big players 5 years ago, much smaller now. An now, unbelievably, Microsoft seems to be getting ready for a big fall: Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going.
Open Source has a BIG advantage that it is not tied to any one person's ego.
Yay for Postgres and PostgreSQL, free software developed on the truly free technically superior original BSD operating system. It's cool to develop on BSD.
You are truly an idiot who does not know his facts. Get it right next time, bozo.
You use AMIGA in your example? Let's talk about current platforms, please.
...
... what's that have to do with anything? You can have them run with Windows on the network if you want. That'll be your nightmare.
...
... just Windows (it being the more popular NOS and all) Linux, despite its warts and pimples, has acceptible security and make it easy to keep up on the latest updates (which, I find, are released quickly enough so that most security flaws are not an issue) without rebooting (which is something that Netware should work on, IMO)
... it is a modern, feature-ful NOS which can stand up to any other NOS on the market today. As far as i'm concerned, that is an inarguable point.
Windows 2000's management features don't even APPROACH Zenworks' functionality. Don't give me that shit
Our workstations get 2k and 98
Yeah, about Security: take a look at that mailing list again. Notice all of the OpenSSL exploits which have plagued GNU/BSD OS's for weeks now?? Was Netware susceptible? Check all of the security patches available on security.debian.org for example
BSD is very secure, and just as secure (if not more so) than Netware. I will NOT argue with you on that point... Linux is another story, however. Sure, it's secure if you keep up on all the patches, i'm not denying that (I use Linux at home, i'd like to work with Linux on the desktop at work if we can swing it (mostly to avoid M$'s increasingly draconian licensing)) However, it does not measure up to Netware's security as far as i'm concerned.
Just to clarify: with respect to security I am not taking jabs at Linux or BSD
And I stand by the premise I made that Novell is still a contender, it's NOT an 'old workhorse' like the topic states
-- Jim
PostgreSQL is being ported by one of Novell's developer Net sysops. Novell are currently managing the port of MySQL to NetWare.
Just kidding. I love the ego of Larry Ellison. I heard he quit the board of Apple because he doesn't have the time to dedicate to it. Yet, he's pouring money into his bid for the America's Cup. It must be great to be that rich.
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
Novell is based on Unix, so your comment that Unix is older than Novell is incorrect. Novell is as old as Unix because it was derived from Unix.
I am a maintainer of a very large open sourced web application framework written in PHP (see my sig). In the beginning of the project we decided to support BOTH MySQL and PostgreSQL. Because we are trying to go for CRM tools, generally feel that PostgreSQL was better suited for that market (hehe we have *emulate* group/roll permissions in MySQL). But our decision to support both was based on the following considerations:
1: There are more web developers that know MySQL than PostgreSQL,so for small businesses, MySQL support is important, and at the time, I was unable to get PostgreSQL to properly initialize under Cygwin on Windows, so we ruled that out.
2: By supporting multiple database backends, we were forced to develop much more extensible application modules, with different levels of database abstractions. Emulating some of PostgreSQL's capabilities in MySQL proved to bew a challenge and so did making PostgreSQL's record set's behave as if they were forward-only. The end result would be easier to port if necessary to Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle or any other reasonably ANSI-complient RDBMS. Although at least one Microsoft engineer has been quoted as saying "Portability is for canoes" (referring to additional QA overhead of portable software), we feel that software designed for portability is in variably better software than single-platform software because the design process is more rigorous.
The end result, I believe, is a quickly maturing project which is both powerful and extensible, and if we only had one open source RDBMS, that would not be the case.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I don't reckon that's accurate. The single best part obout NW ACLs is that fact that a file or directory can't only have one owner and one group permission set. You can have multiple individuals each with different rights, and multiple groups each with different rights. SRWCEMFA is useful, a little more flexible than rwx, but remember that x is a little useless in a Windows environment. S is somewhat redundant, although can come in handy if you use Inherited Rights Filters. Good FS design obviates the need for IRFs, in my opinion. Anyway, here endeth the lesson^H^H^H^H^H^Hrant.
Alister
In theory, ACLs give you more flexability. However, even with the most complex things I've ever done, there's never been a situation where the Unix permissions (simply creating a group to own a set of files, then adding users as needed) haven't been more than adequate, as well as requiring much less inital time setting them up, and requiring a lot less time maintaining them... And by "much less" I really do mean A LOT of time.
Hmm, this make take a while:
99.9% of the time, WCEM are all used together, just like a Unix write bit. Partly, that is because of the way many Windows programs work (e.g. Office).
R is the same as the Unix read bit, and F is just like the Unix execute bit (on folders).
So that leaves us with S and A that Unix doesn't really have. Problem is, I don't find them to be all that useful myself. I mean, if you've given someone the right to modify, and erase a file, I don't see why they should be allowed to modify the permissions on that file as well. So, it's something I've never had any use for.
Additionally, (AFAIK) Netware does NOT come with the BSD chflags (or Linux chattr) attributes. Not that they would be commonly used attributes on a Netware server, but they are very good to have in certain situations.
So, I think the Unix RWX permissions are actually just as flexible as Netware's ACLs. And they are quite a bit less time consuming to set and modify.
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