On Mon, 06 May 2002 00:50:25 +1000, the world broke into rejoicing as Gavin Sherry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > On Sun, 5 May 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > On Sun, 05 May 2002 10:01:57 EDT, the world broke into rejoicing as > > mlw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > > > It is sunday morning and I have been musing about some PostgreSQL issues. As > > > some of you are aware, my dot com, dot died, and I am working on a business > > > plan for a consulting company which, amongst other things, will feature > > > PostgreSQL. As I am working on the various aspects, some issue pop up about > > > PostgreSQL. > > > > > > Please don't take any of these personally, they are only my observations, if > > > you say they are non issues I would rather just accept that we disagree than > > > get into a nasty fight. They *are* issues to a corporate acceptance, I have > > > been challenged by IT people about them. > > > > > > (1) Major version upgrade. This is a hard one, having to dump out and > > > restore a database to go from 7.1 to 7.2 or 7.2 to 7.3 is really a > > > hard sell. If a customer has a very large database, this represents a > > > large amount of down-time. If they are running on an operating system > > > with file-size limitations it is not an easy task. It also means that > > > they have to have additional storage which amount to at least a copy > > > of the whole database. > > > > All of these things are true, and what you should throw back at the IT > > people is the question: > > > > "So what do you do when you upgrade from Oracle 7 to Oracle 8? How > > about the process of doing major Informix upgrades? Sybase? Does it > > not involve some appreciable amounts of down-time?"
> This is most definately the wrong way of thinking about this. I'm not > saying that Mark sets a simple task, but the goals of Postgres should > never be limited to the other products out there. Apparently you decided to fire back an email before bothering to read the paragraph that followed, which read: There may well be possible improvements to the PostgreSQL upgrade process; "zero-downtime, zero-extra space upgrades" do not seem likely to be amongst those things. Yes, there may well be improvements possible. I'd think it unlikely that they'd emerge today or tomorrow, and I think it's silly to assume that all responses must necessarily be of a technical nature. IT guys that are firing shots to the effect of "We expect zero time upgrades" are more than likely playing some other agenda than merely "we'd like instant upgrades." For them to expect instant upgrades when _much_ more expensive systems offer nothing of the sort suggests to me that the _true_ agenda has nothing to do with upgrade time, and everything to do with FUD. If that's the case, and I expect FUD is in play in this sort of situation, then the purely technical response of "we might try that someday" is a Dead Loss of an answer. If they refuse to move from Oracle to PostgreSQL because PostgreSQL has no "instant transparent upgrade" scheme as compared to Oracle, which _also_ has no "instant transparent upgrade," then do you realistically think that the lack of a "instant transparent upgrade" has ANYTHING to do with the choice? I'm merely suggesting that suitable questions head back to determine if the question is an honest one, or if it's merely FUD. -- (reverse (concatenate 'string "gro.gultn@" "enworbbc")) http://www.cbbrowne.com/info/lisp.html When man stands on toilet, man is high on pot. -Confucius ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
