Re: Joshua Drake's "What MySQL Can Learn From PostgreSQL" talk at MySQL Con 2008

On Fri, 2008-04-18 at 11:13 -0700, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:03:53 -0400
> Brad Nicholson <bnichols(at)ca(dot)afilias(dot)info> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 2008-04-18 at 10:38 -0700, Selena Deckelmann wrote:
> > > JD's talk and slides:
> > > http://www.commandprompt.com/blogs/joshua_drake/2008/04/what_mysql_and_really_sun_can_learn_from_postgresql/
> > >
> > > Review of the talk:
> > > http://www.bytebot.net/blog/archives/2008/04/17/what-mysql-can-learn-from-postgresql
> > >
> >
> > Interesting reads.
> >
> > I have to agree with the part about lack of in place upgrades. I
> > would have say that that is the single biggest thorn in our PG using
> > side here at Afilias. Upgrading the data layer via Slony is a
> > **massive** undertaking.
>
> The problem is not that it is inappropriate. It is that it doesn't work
> for databases of that size. Even at 500GB you can have serious issues
> with Slony.

Agreed. We're living with the pain of this with one particular support
system. We have ways to upgrade it that don't involve Slony, but it's
even more painful than the Slony upgrade process.

> This is not actually a Slony limitation but a PostgreSQL one.

Agreed. Slony does a great job of this where it is technically
feasible. It just a really big pain, and takes a lot of work if your
databases are anything but trivial in size.

In place upgrades is number 1 on my wish list.

Brad.