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."

Comments

Novel and OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting how companies turn to open source only when they have no commercial alternative anymore.

Novel needs to do this ..

[oh]

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.

Re:Novel needs to do this ..

[SN74S181]

Unless they want to end up with an orphaned fork of PostgreSQL that they alone can maintain, they will contribute back.

It isn't that alien a concept. It's how things often go. The FUD from GNU advocates often isn't relevant.

Re:What the heck?!

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Ummm....

[Wee]

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.

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

Re:Ummm....

[Anthony Boyd]

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.

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?

You didn't sound like you were flamebaiting him much, although I cringed as I read your post, waiting for the usual comment like, "MySQL is garbage even though everyone uses it, PostgreSQL is heaven and only the blessed use it." But you didn't quite do that, although calling MySQL a DBM file is a bit hostile.

So assuming we're being reasonable, here is what each side basically knows (and exaggerates) about the other. MySQL is supposedly feature poor, an awful thing without transactions, foreign keys, subselects, and other features you would find in Oracle. MySQL is for kiddies. Supposedly. Of course, most of the lacking features were implemented long ago or are about to see the light of day in MySQL 4.1. And most MySQL users freely admit they don't even need the features. MySQL gets deployed on fast-as-hell Web sites that only need to store data and display it. MySQL is for that Web site running on a Linux box that sees waaaayy too many SELECT statements during peak seconds. Cause that's what MySQL does best, and much to the disappointment of high-end database gurus, that's ALL most Web sites need. So the tool to do that best wins that market, and the PostgreSQL fans are just sour about that. On the other side, PostgreSQL is supposedly unstable and difficult. And PostgreSQL has some big-assed speed issues. Supposedly. But most of the bugs I've ever heard people complain about are things that were solved a year ago, or more. They just keep getting rehashed. And last time I was lurking through some mailing lists, PostgreSQL had been given a serious speed boost. And the PostgreSQL fans do have a good point in one area: a lot of things Web developers do in code are supposed to be done in the database. But if all you know is MySQL, you're going to become code-heavy when you push MySQL beyond its niche. And some MySQL fans just don't get it, even as they hit the wall.

So there, I've praised and pissed on both databases. What bothers me most about the usual criticisms is how outdated those criticisms are. Try the databases now. They're both kicking serious ass. They're both going to eat into Oracle's markets. Not all of Oracle's markets. But they ARE legit alternatives in some areas.

Re:Ummm....

[Wdomburg]

>Of course, most of the lacking features were
>implemented long ago or are about to see the light
>of day in MySQL 4.1.

I use MySQL in a production environment (not my decision, it was there when I took the job), so I keep a fairly close eye on what developments are being made.

First off, "about to see the light of day" is a bit misleading. The 4.0 branch hasn't been declared stable yet, and still has a few months to go if the 3.23 development cycle is any indication, and it's already approaching two years since the first stable release of 3.23.

There were some major improvements in the 3.23 branch, with the InnoDB table type implementing some of the missing features, specifically row-level locking, transactions, and foreign keys.

There are a few areas where their foreign key implementation flawed though. For instance, you cannot alter a table or create a new index on it without the key constraints being dropped. Likewise, it will allow you to drop a table that another table references with a foreign key constraint. I don't know about you, but I kind of like my database to actually ENFORCE referential integrity.

There are still improvments being made, I'll grant you. They finally added in support for limited ON DELETE triggers (only SET NULL or CASCADE, but its a start).

A fair bit of work is still necessary to add the rest of the features they're missing. Subqueries, at least, are planned in 4.1, as are stable encypted connections and hot backups.

And there are features that are on their "things that have to be done sometime" list, such as stored procedures and triggers, that are crucial to a lot of database configruations. And there are others, like point in time recovery, that aren't even mentioned on their page.

I haven't looked too closely at the query optimizer and analysis tools in 4.0 yet, but the ones in 3.x pale in comparison to PostgreSQL.

(On a side note, I find some of their commentary on how development of MySQL and Postgres differ to be questionable.. They imply heavily that the PostgreSQL team adds features without much planning and without determining an "optimal, definite solution" before doing so, e.g.:

"PostgreSQL is based on a kernel with lots of contributors. In this setup it makes sense to prioritise adding a lot of new features, instead of implementing them optimally, because one can always optimise things later if there arises a need for this".

My impression is almost entirely opposite from following development of both systems, and reading the mailing lists for each. For example, the initial replication code for MySQL was extremely crude and incomplete, whereas the PostgreSQL team has been implementing full WAL and PITR subsystems to base their replication code on.

In fact, there was a discussion pgsql-hackers recently that brought up the question of whether they should START implementing "good enough for now" solutions in certain cases, as opposed to their policy of not including band-aid solutions.

Anyways, enough of my OT rant... :)

Matt

Re:Ummm....

[kcbrown]

I basically agree with the spirit of your statements, but to me it all comes down to this:

If I have to choose between PostgreSQL and MySQL and I don't know ahead of time every detail of the project I'm choosing it for (including the actual future direction of the project -- and how many times have you seen the direction of your project change unexpectedly after you've made all your decisions?), I'll choose PostgreSQL. And the reason is very simple: its capabilities are a superset of MySQL's.

MySQL wins on only one major front, and as you've noted the degree to which it wins on that front seems to be diminishing: speed. There are some minor advantages (built-in full text indexing, if I'm not mistaken) that it has but speed is the reason people claim to prefer it.

I completely agree that you should always choose the right tool for the job. The problem is that the job quite often changes over time. And I can tell you from experience that switching major tools on a production system is not trivial at all.

It's fortunate that the MySQL guys are adding features, but the PostgreSQL guys are doing the same. Both database engines are improving quite rapidly. So there is some chance that future versions of MySQL will have the features you need even if your project requirements change over time. But there's no guarantee of that, so it seems to me that PostgreSQL remains an overall better choice for the typical project when there is any uncertainty about the nature or direction of the project.

Good stuff!

[shplorb]

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!

Re:Actually...

[wd123]

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.


Please point out to me where anyone said that the PostgreSQL people actually did the NetWare port? It sounds to me more like Novell did the porting and is packaging it with their system. Also, it's entirely possible that a NetWare port would be a hell of a lot simpler than a Windows port. Windows has no real compatibility with programming in "the rest of the computer world," so why would a bunch of volunteer developers spend time on revmaping the whole application to run on it?

Would you rather they got all hardcore about running on Windows or worked on making the DB itself better on the platforms where it already runs?

Re:What the heck?!

[einhverfr]

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) ;)

What about "Pervasive"?

[PhilHibbs]

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.

Sigh (rolls eyes)

[buss_error]

Linux aficionados might sneer at an old workhorse like NetWare

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.

Re:Don't Sneer at Netware/Novell

[FatherOfONe]

I don't want to repeat every Item you put on the list, so I will do my best to summerize.

Point 1. You say that Novell is easier to use than Windows NT for most stuff. You point out NWAdmin and Console One.

I agree to a point, but take an average user that knows Windows and have them try and admin a Novell Network. I love nwadmin, and think console one is ok, but it is way different than most people know. Also, you forgot about all the console commands that the user/admin will have to know. NetWare still requires you to load inetcfg and filtcfg for a lot for admin stuff. Almost any monkey could setup a NT server. (Excluding Email)

Point 2. You named one large company that uses Novell and say that their tree (Directory) is the largest in the world.

Great point. Name 10 others! For every one you name there will be 20+ others who are using Windows and or some form of Unix. Also it helps when people on your board of directors also are on Novell's board... My point is that almost nobody is commiting to Novell for the future of their business.

Point 3. It would be bad for Novell to brand a Linux distro, because they couldn't charge for it.

This isn't correct. They could and they know it. Some people within Novell agree with me on this issue and have taken this idea up to "upper management". It has fallen on deaf ears.

Now to add some more points why they should get off NetWare and convert to a Linux Distro.

1. No cost in kernel development.
2. No cost in converting Apache to Novell
3. JVM development would not be needed
4. No money to IBM to port Websphere
5. No more FTP development.
6. They could focus on improving Linux for printing
7. They could offer support and service better than RedHat does.

Even Oracle would now run on "Novell" again. They could market Novell in areas that they NEVER were able to before. I know a lot of shops that would NEVER consider NetWare on their mission critical database servers. They tend to live and die Unix. Well now they could have it, and the LAN administrators could admin it with NDS.

Novell would then have a NOS that most people would consider for something other than file and print. Granted their printing is second to none.

Would these changes make Novell what it was 10 years ago? No! Would it keep them from a slow death? Yes.

Let me ask you one question. If Novell did this, and produced a quality product and service, whould you switch off of them?