Re: 8.5 release timetable, again

Le mercredi 26 août 2009 à 01:36 -0600, Rick Gigger a écrit :
> One possible reason that replication is more critical now than it
> was
> a year ago is the rise in cloud computing. The ability to fire up
> instances on demand is much more useful when some of those boxes can
> be database servers and those databases servers can replicate the
> primary database and start doing something useful. As far as I can
> tell this one feature alone is the one thing that makes it hard to
> convince people to migrate away from Mysql despite it's demonstrable
> inferiority in many other areas.

I think you should have a deep look at
these two manuals that I wrote for Drupal:

Guidelines for writing MySQL and PostgreSQL compliant SQL
http://drupal.org/node/555514

and

Quidelines for writing SQL efficient code:
http://drupal.org/node/559302

I have been using PostgreSQL since 1998. I took part in the development
of pgAdmin 1 and pgAdmin 2. I am very proud of the PostgreSQL community,
but I think it should fix some important issues in the domain of SQL
compliance and compatibility.

When reading developers comments on Drupal web site, it seems that there
is deep misunderstanding between developers and SQL databases. I would
say that 1% of developers know database technology. For example, most
Drupal developers think that an INNER JOIN is faster than a LEFT JOIN.

The reality of facts is that developers will not even test PostgreSQL
and stop using it after the first SQL warning or error.

So I would recommend focussing on usability.

Then you can work on replication and materilized views. You probably
know that a cloud requires several computers. With materialized view, a
single computer can perform 100 times better. I see plenty of of
possibilities to improve speed using materialized views.

But first and firstly ... focus on usability. Then make a pre-release of
a PostgreSQL 8.4.2 release or so ... We need to wipe out this MySQL
issue once for all.

If there is a compat MySQL mode or functions, then include it in core.
This is too important for PostgreSQL success.

Why MySQL usability is achieved add materialized views and MySQL is dead
in the performance statistics, beaten 99% by PostgreSQL.

Kind regards,
Jean-Michel