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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."
Actually, since version 7.1 (current is 7.2) row size is unlimited. Or, rather the limits are imposed by the operating system (2GB files on ext2?).
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
It's okay if you need to recover a deleted file. If you delete a folder, you've got to do quite a bit more work to get it back.
Actually, the disk space is still marked as used, but is made available when needed. (as of Netware 5.1)
A 'user' has to have administrative permissions ('S' IIRC) to the folder to undelete a file. To undelete a folder, you have to have Admin priv for the volume.
Besides, Windows has a Recycle Bin, Mac has the Trash, etc. Novell isn't all that great.
There are some cool things about Netware though. If a file has been unused for a while, it will be compressed to save disk space. After it continues to be unused, it will automatically be moved to your archive device (if you have one). So while you see a file on your Netware filesystem, it may actually be on a tape jukebox, and will be restored when you access it.
Did I mention that all this happens AUTOMATICALLY and TRANSPARENTLY?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Availability:
I think there are some 3rd party products implementing various kinds of clustering/HA/failover. For 7.3 (or was it 7.4) they are working to integrate replication into the core.
Scalability:
Well, postgres uses a multi-process model, like say, apache. So in principle it can scale quite well on an SMP system. Regarding clustering, I don't know if the current work on replication includes this or not. I'd guess that when you get replication working correctly, adding clustering is not a big deal. However, the kind of clustering were you have many servers working on the same data, like the oracle9 clustering, is still quite far off, I'd say
Secure data:
postgres can do hot backups, yes. The pg_dump program outputs to standard output, so you can easily integrate it into any normal unix backup scheme with tape robots and whatnot.
Performance:
postgres uses the OS file system, raw devices are not supported. So anything that the OS file system layer supports (e.g. raid) postgres supports. There was some talk about supporting raw devices, but it was decided that it was not worth the effort.
Novell has other fetures i like more. The ability to install an application on ONE desktop and then load all register keys onto any computer with windows that uses that program when it loads is a pretty good feture. You install an application once and it then works without hassle on all other machines.
NDS is pretty souped up too and makes AD and LPAD look silly in comparison. It can handle silly amounts of objects in the tree without crumbling. Its enough to drive a whole e-commerse site on.
NDS exists for linux too so interoperability is not an issue. A client for linux would be just what linux needs. My dream network would be Netware on linux and linux clients. A better network to administer cant exist.
The companies that hoose novell and installs AD is in for a bigtime dissapointment because of the extreme lack of fetures in windows like filesystem limitations etc.
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