Re: On what we want to support: travel?

On Tuesday 07 November 2006 20:52, Dawid Kuroczko wrote:
> On 11/2/06, Darcy Buskermolen <darcyb(at)commandprompt(dot)com> wrote:
> > > > We don't even have to win the TPC benchmarks- simply competing puts
> > > > postgres in a different category.
> > >
> > > I agree with this point.
> > >
> > > And, additionally, this benchmarks could help the developers to improve
> > > PostgreSQL specifically in those areas where it does not win yet.
> >
> > Saying that we need to join TCP to be able to improve PostgreSQL is not
> > correct, we have access to a lot of "TPC like" tests
> > http://pgfoundry.org/projects/tpc-w-php for example, but because it's not
> > an official TPC test we can't announce it's results with any marketing
> > weight. Al that TPC provides us is some official marketing buzzwords and
> > industry
>
> Which could very well result in expanded userbase.
>
> A simple example: company which does not yet use PostgreSQL, and
> someone suggests running some DB on PostgreSQL instead of
> <some other DB>. If it involves some mission critical DB, this will be
> most likely refused, because the PostgreSQL is not known to them and
> untested. If it is some expendable DB, our open source competitors
> will be probably at least match us performance wise, and so there is
> little reason to switch to PostgreSQL. And now, having Core members
> on conferences won't change that, I'm afraid.

Really? Your first argument was that PostgreSQL would not be accepted because
it was not known to them. Well, presenting at conferences get this project
exposure, both to developers and to executives, depending on the conference.
Imagine that the largest software conference in Brazil asks the project if
someone cancome to their country to give a keynote speech. Do you really
want to turn down that exposure? Do you want to not have a booth at a
conference like the recent one in Germany where there are 50,000 attendees,
and you know they are going to go to booths for a half dozen other database
groups?

> Having TPC membership
> and benchmarks gives leverage (buzzwordish, but still) for convincing
> sceptics into at least fully testing PostgreSQL. The "TPC-like" tests
> are useless in such "political" discussions.
>

Does it? Have you looked at a TPC benchmark, or the published results? There
is *no way* we can top the performance metrics that are put out by folks like
Oracle if for no other reason than the systems they run the test on are
completely unrealistic. And we cannot run our own TPC benchmarks with other
database software on a standardized hardware because their software licenses
will not allow it. And even if we could of course people would dismiss it as
biased testing.

> Then, having successfully deployed PostgreSQL in some company,
> some employees will be forced to learn and to use PostgreSQL.
> Some of them will like it, some even will start advocating for it.
> But the first installation has to be made somehow. Sun's support
> for PostgreSQL certainly helps in that area -- if you say, Hey, Sun
> supports it, it's got to be worth a try, chances are people will listen
> to you. TPC membership would be a similar argument, I think.
>

Except that this ignores all of the market research that open source is
traditionally implemented in companies from the ground up rather than from
the top down.

> Having core members presenting in all over the Globe won't be much
> help in that area. It will ceratinly help, and is needed also, but is more
> of "for the future development" kind.
>
> By the way, it could be worth to think about planning travel few months
> before. For instance -- if planned early enough using, traveling using
> European budget lines a SkyEurope could cost aroung $50 (usually less)
> per flight. When carefully planned a person might visit few conferences
> and also some "ad hoc" created meetings with local OS groups. This
> would have both "bang for buck", be very tireing, and intereting (if one
> likes to travel) at the same time. Having you guys flown over from the
> US can be expensive (and is even more a reason for throwing you all
> over the Europe ;))
>

If we were going to do that, yes, it would make sense to do it that way, but I
think the current feeling is that people should be kept as local as possible;
ie. flying someone over from the U.S. to Europe on our own dime makes little
sense when there are a lot of solid contributors in Europe already.

> > babble. Also the thought of altering PG in ways to make it perform
> > better specificaly for specific benchmarks is not what we should be
> > throwing funds or even more importantly developer time at.
>
> I very much doubt any PG developer would agree on such "benchmark tuning".
> Yet having PostgreSQL perform particulary badly at some benchmark is
> a hint that such area needs addressing. Take a look at OSDL labs
> benchmarks, they are really help identifying and eliminating bottlenecks.
>

Between OSDL and that Sun already has a TPC membership, I think a pint needs
to be made that benchmarks are resources that can be obtained in other ways.
My observation is that some of the newer companies like EnterpriseDB are very
good when it comes to working with the community donating and coordinating
developer resources, but seem less interested in providing community members
to "stump" for PostgreSQL as PostgreSQL community members. I'm comfortable
with that, but we still need to provide "face time" as a project.

On a side note, this discussion seems to be turning into a TPC vs. Speakers
debate, which is unfortunate, as there are certainly other items that should
be in a discussion of things to spend money on, like software certifications
and standards processes, which so far have pretty much been ignored.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL