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

Re:what is netware?

[iggymanz]

Hahah! you must be a young-un'! Novell Netware was THE workgroup network file/print server for the late 80's. The version 3.x of it had a stability and ease of administration that puts most Unix systems to shame (then Novell ruined it in the 4.x versions with unstable add-ons to do interoperation with other platforms)

They had market share because they could do what Microsoft could not at that time - make a server OS.

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:This surprises me

[joib]

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?).

MySQL vs. PostgreSQL

[mbogosian]

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.

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....

[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!

Don't Sneer at Netware/Novell

[evilviper]

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.

Re:What the heck?!

[g4dget]

Oh! Whoops! Postgres doesn't run natively on Windows. [postgresql.org] This is COMPLETELY unacceptable.

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.

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:Best undelete

[evilviper]

Novell has the filesystem with the best undelete I've ever seen.

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.

and it's diskspace is marked 'free/unused'.

Actually, the disk space is still marked as used, but is made available when needed. (as of Netware 5.1)

With a special undelete tool, a user can later undelete any of his file

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?

MySQL vs. PostgreSQL posts - a lot of them!!!

[haggar]

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.

Re:Is postgresql really enterprise-capable?

[joib]

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.

Re:Best undelete

[miffo.swe]

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.