On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 2:37 AM, Zdravko Gligic <[email protected]> wrote: > I mapped out a set of web 2.0 level questions: >>>> a) How many of the update headers are actually useful? Is it just the >>>> last successfully written one or even just a few last ones ? > > Jason Smith tried reducing them to my 0.2 level: >>> Excellent point. That's just it, isn't it? >>> How useful are the lower rungs of a ladder? How useful is the food you >>> ate a year ago? > > Jens Alfke tried re-reduced them even much lower: >> How useful was the accident insurance policy you paid for last year and then >> didn’t have an accident? :-) >> The update header is largely there for disaster recovery. > > But neither one even bothered trying to answer my question of whether > just the last updated header or perhaps the last few are ever used. >
Zdravko, Others have already responded with more technical comments but I would just like to echo Randall's sentiment a bit. The CouchDB community is very light hearted in spirit. Occasionally some of our responses may seem a bit odd or out of place at times. There was no malice in the responses form Jason or Jens though. The various technical discussions we have as a community span months and years and have been approached from many angles. The particular issue of disk usage is our "ugly wart" as it were and we as a community constantly attack this issue from a variety of angles. We are seriously looking into minimizing the impact of this issue and have been taking measures to combat it. That said, our community long ago decided that we laugh about almost everything. Our official motto is "Relax!" which speaks volumes to the point of view from which we consider technical issues. This is a community that maintains as little stress as possible. It was never stated explicitly, or detailed at length, but I believe we have all come to the collective decision that a bunch of stressed out hackers working on a database is not a good proposition. To illustrate, at the last CouchDB conference, Damien Katz shared the limelight during his keynote with a racoon at the bon fire. This is a community that prefers laughter over groaning, post-it note sketches over requirements docs, and racoons over martinis. I can't speak for everyone but if the issue of disk usage concerns you, then I invite you to join our group and help attack the issue. We're always looking for dedicated contributors that will help the community grow. Paul J Davis
