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.org TLD Now Runs on PostgreSQL
johnnyb writes "The .org domain, which has long run on Oracle systems, is now being transferred to a PostgreSQL system. I guess we can now dispel the "untested in mission-critical applications" myth."
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.ca runs on MS-DOS running some home brew DB that is just a bunch of batch files
-- OMFG = Oh My Floatse Goatse
Not true! I know someone who got fired for choosing oracle, then being unable to properly implement it.
Now we get to see how PostgreSQL handles those 98 % of wasted inquiries from DNS servers that don't know .elvis is not a TLD.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
Because they don't take context or purpose into account at all. There are things that Postress may be better for and things that Oracle certainly shines at. I mean, hell, I love MySQL, too, but I wouldn't want to use it as the backend for _my_ system. Not that the others are hollisticaly "bad", it's just that Oracle is the most appropriate for this situation.
What's a TLD doing with a database? Making ridiculous numbers of extremely lightweight queries, and managing redundancy. That's not necessarily the same thing that everybody wants an "enterprise class" "tested" database to do for "mission critical" tasks.
:Wq
Not an editor command: Wq
I hope computerworld isn't running on PostgreSQL!
I'm much funnier now that I'm a subscriber.
All they need is netcat, shell scripts and grep.
Trolling is a art,
Verisign runs the shared registry with Oracle, but the registrar-specific data was and still is stored using Ingres.
No, it simply means that its going to be tested in a larger environment and if it does well then they get to party and say "woohoo it worked!" and if it flops they're all gonna feel really stupid. It doesnt mean its stable at all. The common practice of paraphrasing "LOOK!! Someone is using our product so it MUST work perfectly." is actually quite disturbing.
Please, please, please tell me that there is some commercial entity that they have contracted to for support. I really dont want my domain to be unreachable because they do their own support and are debating about which fix is the "right thing to do" so that upstream accepts it.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
Today is a good day for open source and free software!
I had the misfortune of dealing with oracle tech support team once and I can say I am not surprised the ".org" domain has shifted to PG.
The DB was locking up when trying to retrieve data from a large table (>10 M rows) using a very complex query.The oracle guys kept suggesting that reduce the size of the table.
Now seriously is that a valid option ? Hey man , I have a million bucks in my acct. and i can't withdraw from the ATM ??
Just delete some of it and then try again ?
Or the most common answer from Oracle tech team is "we know its a problem but we will not fix it in this release. Just buy the next version if you want it fixed ?
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
I hope this isn't the reason why they sent me an email yesterday morning with a list of over 86,000 valid contact email addresses. Here's an article about it
I don't think the issue is that PostgreSQL will crunch data as well as Oracle. It's just that PostgreSQL has always had an undeserved reputation as "the database to use when you can't afford a REAL database", when actually it's a very robust and secure system that can compete quite well with commercial systems.
I'd really like to see some serious tests done with PostgreSQL. Database systems, especially Oracle, can be an expensive part of a datacenter. Considering that with Linux/PostgreSQL your only cost is hardware/support, it may very well scale more cost effectively than Oracle.
There's currently way too much marketing and FUD to get a real idea how these systems compare though.
If it breaks they can just go to postgresql.org to get updates and.... oh wait.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Why not just use Perl? It's the perfect tool for the job, especially if you want to use 100% of your CPU all the time.
...for some reason I can't resolve postgresql.org anymore...
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
Well, we ran Postgres as our primary database for a Managed Network System Security,a nd the postgres database stored all alerts coming in from all our sensors, which included a .EDU that had qutie a bit of traffic going through it (our own implemented honeypot). The only issue we ran into was with disk space with packet logging, which was unrelated to the Postgres Database. We would get any number of hits per data into the database (sometimes over a million in a weeks time). Ive come to prefer Postgres over MySQL, although Id still take Oracle over each if I could afford the license.
You wouldn't have gotten FP, but I couldn't resolve slashdot.org. Goddammed hippie databases being used for mission criticial applications.
I was a designer of the system that runs .nz (New Zealand), which is also based around PostgreSQL, running on three replicated back-end application servers.
The system was developed in mod Perl and went live on October 14th 2002.
The plan is to release this (including client software) under the GPL after a stabilisation period.
Maybe my old company Great Bridge will go back into business. Someone forward this story to Frank Batten!
but they call it "Redhat Database" http://www.redhat.com/software/database/
from the artical it didn't look like TCO was a factor.
1: they liked versioning in postgress.
2: they liked the open source comunity.
3: Oracle didn't have anything over postgress[that wsa usefull]
Maybe 2 relates to TCO, the amount you'd have to pay to get the same level of developer support on oracle would be huge.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
...don't you have to peridoically stop a PostgreSQL server to run VACUUM() or something similar to clean out old deleted rows or something like that? I know some of you who are actual PostgreSQL users will probably correct me (or tell me I'm talking out of my hat), but I think that this might make it hard to run PostgreSQL in a 24/7/365 environment.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
Besides the MySQL rulez comments. How DOES MySQL compare with PostgreSQL. I must admit I was turned off of MySQL a long time ago as soon as I realized it didn't support transactions.
However, I have never been happy with Microsoft's SQLServer and have heard rumors that MySQL has come along way since I looked at it 3 years ago.
But what I don't know is where PostgreSQL fits into all of this. I mean, if it IS the better system, why do I only hear mySQL when someone is talking about open source databases?
...that the entire O'Reilly Practical PostgreSQL book was put online?
;) Looks like it is time to revisit postgres, especially for some db-agnostic PEAR apps I'm building. For me, it's the subselects that really make it worth the effort.
I've spent so much time lately in the (relatively) flat-table world of MySQL that I had forgotten about inherited tables, subselects, constraints in table definitions, and oh yes, vacuuming.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Posts like this remind me of WHY my skills in database and application design are in such high demand....
So what, it's still slow as hell.
MySQL rulez!
Yes yes, please keep thinking that Troll. I'm paid very well to clean up your messes.
The real problem with Postgresql, however, is that if you are doing lots of updates where the keys increase forever, the index files grow forever. You can, of course, drop and recreate them (which we do in a cron job), but in a real 24/7 environment you've got a real problem when your queries all turn into table-scans because the indexes aren't built yet.
Here is some more information (seeIndex Maintenance? )
The only option I know if is to have two sets of tables and swap between them.
-- ac at work
Oracle, as most commercial DBMSs, doesn't let you export the database in SQL format. Of course, you can write scripts to do that, but it shows how the commercial companies are always trying to find ways to lock you in.
By the looks of the .NSF in their URL they are running Blowtus Goats (Lotus Notes to the lay-person who was lucky enough never to have worked with Lotus "databases"). I'd rather use MS Access through WINE on a Linux box with an AMD processor through a dialup connection.
LOL, while taking a break from typing this, I did a Netcraft lookup on their domain. It says, they are running Windows NT/98, which isn't too surprising, but this was:
"NT4/Windows 98 users include ABB Asea Brown Boveri Ltd, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd and Ernst & Young International"
I guess Chernobyl can't blame their disaster on a BSOD, but maybe these guys can. I mean, christ, upgrade to Millenium Edition already.
Also, I hear computers can be used to automate repetitive tasks. It's really quite amazing.
Known mostly as the domain for non-commercial organisations, .org is the Internet's fifth largest top-level domain, with more than 2.4 million registered domain names worldwide.
/. non-profit?
So Slashdot is Non-Commercial? I don't know. Is non-commercial the same as non-profit, is
How strict are they about that. You would think that they would be but I have not heard. Slashdot used to be free/non-ads (except for the one at the top) but now there is an add on every comment page unless you pay. Is that non-commercial?
www.fotoforay.com
The transition details can be found on the Public Interest Registry's Homepage. In short, they'll close the registry at 14:00 UTC tomorrow, transfer to Afilias's systems, and reopen the registrations on Sunday at 23:00 UTC.
I don't car how much you test it, I'd like it to actually pass the test. Here's hoping
Yeah. Or we could do that in regard to all the other mission-critical applications it's been in all this time! :)
Can you please give us links that discuss this?
I'd like to know if IBM can make a compelling
argument for using DB/2 instead of PostgreSQL.
*sigh* back to work...
... or maybe it is for an ISP.. but they're not gonna lose millions of $$ because of a one minute or even 10 second glitch in DNS. Ppl who complain that PSQL is not their choice for mission critical applications are talking about running their enterprise apps on it, not DNS.
Or are we supposed to pronounce it POST-GRE-SEE-KWEL? Or POST-GRES-CUE-ELL? Or POST-GRES-QUERY LANGUAGE?
And where the hell did that name come from? Did they take "Ingres", and increment it (like how C became C++), thereby making it "Postgres"? Then "PostgreSQL" means "the better-than-Ingres query language"?
I hate it when techies come up with names. It always ends up being something that's either stupid and meaningless, like C#, or self-referential and too-cute-by-half, like GNU. Recursive acronym my ass.
Shame on Google.
"untested in mission-critical applications"?
You'd have to be a completely ignorant moron to believe that. A good number of large companies have been running PostgreSQL succesfully in mission-critical situation for *years*.
It's been used in network-monitoring apps for deployment in military vehicles, $30 million POS systems, medical systems, ticketmaster, a good number of heavy-traffic web sites, and just about everything else you can think of.
Anybody who told you it hadn't been tested was living long in the past.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
If I here those words again, I think my head will explode. I don't remember anyone saying to use a wrench for a hammer if you have both. When people argue these things, they are argueing that a tool is the right tool for a job. PostgreSQL is being argued to be a tool that can be used for enterprise jobs. Either confront that or not, don't just state the obvious. No one said PostgreSQL is the only database to use.
I here this everytime a programming language is mentioned too. Either say Java can't do what perl can, or Java is slower than perl and back those up. Don't say Java is good and Perl is good because everyone knows that.
I don't mean to take my frustrations out on you poor poster, it's just high time people realize that this is like argueing philips or flat-head. It should be a poll option because it's preference, not because there ever is a right or wrong database for a job. It's a choice. After this has been going for a while without problems, we can then proceed to choose PostgreSQL to save money or because we like it better than Oracle or DB2.
It's as annoying as:
1: In soviet russia, Vi>Emacs
2: ?
3: goatse.cx, "MOD PARENT UP"
Well, how complicated is the database anyway? I mean, Postgre is not that bad of a system, just a little akward at times in programming. But you can't just say how many hits the database takes as a whole, or just say it is or not mission critial. You have to look at how many tables get hit or completely walked for each query, how large the data that must be indexed/scanned during each hit, how complex the data is, the complexity of the relations... etc. etc. Oracle is just probably not worth the cost for the application needed and is just to much horsepower for what is needed now or in the forseeable future. Especially when they can hire a few solid programmers cheap to make sure the systsem is well maintained. I just think it's nice to see PostgreSQL getting used more and more, especially since the open source database community has been a little biased for a while towards MySQL... or in my opinion anyway ;)
Worse than that, it took several months for the Oracle support people to actually find out what had happened to FORTRAN. At first they told us that it was still there, but our new system wasn't configured right. Dozens of emails later, they finally found out the truth, and admitted it to us: you cannot rely on Oracle.
"Quality" is a very nebulous term. There are things that postgres does better than Oracle. Often it's when Oracly is just overkill (usually by a long shot) and postgres is just easier to set up and manage. Also has neat features like regular expressions.
The only reason I prefer Oracle to postgres (as a developer) for large(er) projects is that pgAdminII is just no SQL Navigator.
sic transit gloria mundi
I have been waiting for large financial and enterprise management apps to support Postgresql, cutting the all important TCO down to just support and hardware of the database. Although GNU Enterprise GNU Enterprise may become the thing small companies or finacially strapped have been looking for
GTA3 is like the Sims to me - MC Hawking
Less is more !
I am assuming you want pure reporting speed and that there will be a couple of batch additions and updates a day. Is this a correct assuption of the usage pattern, or am I off?
In that case there is a whole class of databases -- are better than traditional sytle -- of column oriented databases that will smoke Oracle or PostgreSQL. Fastest amoung them is probably KDB. It doesn't seem like there is that much information in the database, so maybe even a memory resident database would perform better.
I still don't understand, why PostreSQL? It is a cost issue? It certainly isn't a decision based on performance.
When I google looking for benchmarks comparing
PostgreSQL to MySQL, I can't find anything more
recent that June, 2001.
I know that PostgreSQL has come a long way in
the last 2 years, so I'm unwilling to form any
opinions on benchmark information that is out
of date.
*sigh* back to work...
Of course it doesn't. SQL isn't a format. It's a "Structured Query Language". I don't even know what you're trying to do.
As far as exporting, of course you can export. You can export whatever you want in virtually any format you want, and have been since, well, for as long as I remember. Ask a DBA.
The article says that the .org domains is the fifth largest TLD. What are the top four? .com and .net (obviously) .ca? .uk? .edu?
then what?
.org is also transitioning from verisign to affilias/PIR.
.info with postgres.
I think the transition isn't just databases, but also netwokrs.. companies.. infrastructure.
I'd check to see if affilias isn't also doing
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
:-)
Utilizing magnetic schemata since
This doesn't match with my experience. Order of the conditions in a WHERE clause doesn't effect the optimizer. Specifically, in this case, I create a sample million-row table:(I had to fiddle with the above because
I then run two queries, reversing the order of the constraints in the where clause:You can see that the performance of the query is the same in both cases. Am I missing something?
-BbT
A whole bunch of people got fired for choose Oracle, mostly because they choose to buy way more licences then there were employees.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
Ok. I think I figured it out.
.CA
.COM
.ORG?
Microsoft puts the "." in
Sun puts the "." in
PostgreSQL puts the "E_fatalError - Database error" in
I have a test on this tomorrow, so I just wanted to make sure.
laugh.
HURD - Hurd's Under Research & Development
Speaking from experience, they are fine backups. And any *good* Oracle DBA that you talk to will tell you that they also dump their tables to text every day for backups too.
Why is SQL necessary to support DNS queries?
/etc/hosts good enough?
Isn't
OK, I know DNS does a little bit more than mapping names (domains) to numbers (IP addresses), but not much.
Whassup?
PostgreSQL Inc. offers excellent support contract options, enterprise software additions (replication!), and traning, etc. for PostgreSQL. Check them out at:
http://www.pgsql.com/
...I can tell you without question that none of the effects associated with crack include the forming of erroneous conclusions regarding the current state of database field testing.
Marijuana, on the other hand, allowed me to accept such conclusions as valid, mostly because I was too lazy to doublecheck.
The compelling IBM argument was "We will give you db2 & services for free" VA_'WHATEVER_THEY_ARE_CALLED_THIS_MONTH' said OK!
Well I know DB/2 does an amayzing job or clustering and has great failure recovery. I mean DB/2 wasn't designed as a stand alone DB server it was designed to run on big machines 32+ processors and clusters. Postgres wasn't. Its not so much about can it do SQL well ... most all of them do it well it all about what else does it give you in terms of expansion ,recovery , ease of setup, support .... some of these postgres might win but in the biggies DB/2 is really an exceptional product.
p.s. I am not an IBM employee I'm just speaking from experience and information I've read about them.
pg is great, but it still requires a shutdown to perform a backup (pg_dump and dumpall are exports, not backups).
pg_dump works fine on a running database, and guess what: the output of pg_dump contains the entire database in SQL format. Pipe that to gzip and presto, you have a compressed backup file ready for the tape. Automate the who thing with cron and you can have hourly backups.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
What is sad is that I trust these people with my domain information. Maybe I'll move my domains this year. Register.com seems like a good operation.
closed source software gets debugged before shipping
Sometimes, maybe. But I've certainly seen plenty of shipping closed source packages that were buggier than a south Florida swamp in July... So it isn't always true.
Yes, and with pg_dump dumps in different formats are possible, some of which are already compressed.
You shouldn't put too much in performance numbers, scalability, query language, procedure language, or administration tools (they aren't even close in some of these). Neither MySQL nor PostgreSQL are anywhere near the top. You need to make an argument based on price (and even then, most companies would rather drop $50,000 or more on a better database).
The problem is it's hard to find a fair benchmark. Most SQL bencharks won't run on MySQL because it's missing so many features.
Postgresql can be tested by the OSDB suite found on source forge. It does well. But the most important benchmark is how well it runs YOUR query load. And no one other than you can benchmark that.
The real issue is how a database behaves under changing load conditions. How do both databases perform when you write once per second? What about 5 writes a second, 10 writes a second? Some database have serious contention issues between writes and reads.
Postgresql uses MVCC to reduce the contention to about zero on things like content management systems and what not. Which means it behaves well as write frequency increases. Try it and benchmark it for your load, it's the only way you can actually know.
--- It is not the things we do which we regret the most, but the things which we don't do.
That is a bold faced lie. You sir, are a liar.
pg_dump not only runs WHILE the database is up, it does so in such a way as to ensure completely transactionally pure backups (i.e. snapshots) with virtually no impact on performance.
And they do so in SQL.
If you don't know anything about a subject you should keep you mouth shut. You only convince people you're ill informed and ignorant when you post lies.
--- It is not the things we do which we regret the most, but the things which we don't do.
Oh, and it costs $1000 for a perpetual license to update a mysql database running on innodb hot.
--- It is not the things we do which we regret the most, but the things which we don't do.
I run a text-chat site that is -- please don't lynch me -- based on Win2K and MS SQL Server. The site does about 10-12 DB transactions a second on a slow day and about 100-150/sec on a fast day. At peak hours we have something like 30% CPU usage on the average (it's a 700 Mhz box, not bleeding-edge).
A friend of mine put someone in touch with me who was trying to build a vaguely similar system and was having no end of problems. Transactions were timing out left and right, and his machine was more than twice as fast as mine. From his experiences -- and from what I've seen in a lot of parallel setups -- there is a difference between being able to code something functional and being able to code something that functions intelligently. I'd learned a lot of ways to cut down massively on system overhead -- use stored procedures, turn off locks when they're not required, don't use transactions unless they're absolutely needed, etc., etc. -- and all of them add up and pay off.
As far as PostgreSQL goes, it's probably going to depend on how good a job they do coding it into their system. If they do it well, I'd imagine PostgreSQL is gonna be quite solid. If they do it like idiots, not even the best database solution in the world -- not Oracle, nothing -- is going to save them.
Heck, even Oracle is going to break if you try to fetch a billion rows at once; the trick is to find smarter ways to partition and subdivide the data, to cut down the amount of time needed for every little step on the way. (I found out that adding ONE index in my system sped things up by about 30% alone, an index I would not have realized I needed until I ran a performance profile.)
Let's see how well they do before we sling tomatoes, OK?
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
Now I know why I haven't read rfc 1035. I do thank you because it's been a while since I've seen an ASCII diagram. This easily takes the place of my compiler design book for most boring information ever sifted through.
If they can make 'master files' a cube, then everything should be a cube.. I don't see why user program has to be a square.
My Blog
Why on earth was this modded "funny"? It's actually true.
...amusing when someone mispells...
Is this real irony or Alanis irony?
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
PostgreSQL comes into play here at the registry. In this case Afilias. They are the authoritative source for all registrations in the .org domain (or will be soon, I'm not sure the exact date). You may recognize them as the registry for .info as well.
All of the DNS infrastructure will be run by UltraDNS and they run Oracle. You may recognize them as the DNS infrastructure provider for .info.
I'm assuming that .org will work the same as .info (since it's the same registry and same DNS server infrastructure) and if so, all changes are incremental and near realtime.
One of the PostgreSQL developers is at Linux.conf.au right now. During his talk on Wednesday he mentioned this and that Oracle accused the .org registry guys of "criminial negligence" if they switched to PostgreSQL over Oracle. All I can say is: "HAH!" Feeling the pressure...
There really isn't any performance or load issues, so PostgreSQL is just something that work. I would imagine that MySQL would also work just as well in this situation, too.
I did an informal benchmark on "enterprise level" queries when PostGreSQL 7.2 came out, and found that PostGreSQL came within a third of Oracle's speed on hash joins and within half of Oracle's speed on sorts, both on DSS type queries. Not bad at all for free, but not a cost-effective replacement for Oracle either.
From what I understand, Oracle stores numeric data in such a way that a straight byte-compare will return the proper order, and it looked to me like PostGreSQL was doing conversions for every compare. Oracle's hash joins are just mind-blowingly fast. Other operations are mind-numbingly slow.
Note however this is meaningless; Oracle performs differently on different hardware (this was Tru64/Alpha stuff) and different versions (8,8i,9i) can perform very differently on the same hardware.
There are lies, damn lies, and benchmarks.
goddamn i have to clean my guts off the floor, cause my side split over that one. i have to say it's neither. it doesn't smell like real irony. and alanis irony would be more like, oh, i dunno, having a spelling test when you've got your period or something. not that that's a slag (no pun intended) against wimmin, because one look at my record collection would show you how much i respect women. the point is, it's (ed - ironic) a lot like alanis irony, only without the intention of irony that makes it's (ed - still ironic, but not funny this time) non-irony itself a little bit ironic. but it's still ironic. in that kind of "because it's stupid" way.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
So maybe he doesn't work in a DNS-related job, you know?
Like, I expect there are plenty of your own comments that are wrong or stupid because you haven't read every single TLD.
*Maybe* your complaining would be legitimate (though still not polite) on a DNS mailing list. It's out of line on Slashdot, however, which is at best a general tech forum.
May we never see th
It's because people who paid out tons of money for Oracle are like people who paid out tons of money for a Ferrari or Scientology -- they feel vaguely unsure that they made the right decision and need to keep vocally defending it to everyone within range.
I'd say there's little reason for 98% of Oracle licenses.
May we never see th
$30 million POS systems
That's a lot of money to spend on a POS!
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
closed source software gets debugged before shipping
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha that's a good one.
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
My point wasnt that SQL was *required* for dns, it just makes it super easy. Sure, bind doesn't use SQL and it works perfectly fine (although management is hell with thousands of domains).
/etc/hosts style nameserver is a BAD IDEA. :)
My argument was that a purly
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
Other column-oriented databases? Yes, there is Sybase IQM and Alterian. Sometimes they are mistakenly called tokenized dabatases, but is that a misnomer (it is really an orthogonal feature as Aruna shows being a tokenized databased, but not column-oriented). KDB is the fastest, smallest, and simpliest though (most of the time this simplicity is good, but sometimes it is bad). I don't know of any free versions. It might make a good project, since they are (I think) conceptually easier than the standard row-oriented B-Tree based systems.
Here is an older article on KDB and a high-level view of some of the tricks that it uses: Kx Systems: The Lord Nelson Of Software Companies?
As a fellow VI'er who's pushed :Wq way too many times, your sig is cool.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?