Re: [GENERAL] Re: Is PostgreSQL ready for mission criticalapplications?

I have been surprised by the response to this question. I was hoping that the
responses would be more consistent, after all when software is unreliable it
is generally known by all users.

Although one would expect a subjective bias to the opinions, the answers
provided in the thread are highly polarized. Jochen Topf gave a frightening
description of an unreliable database which gave unpredictable results. For
example:

> The most frustrating thing is that most bugs are not repeatable or at least
> not repeatable in a small test script that I could send in with a bug report.
> Looking at the bug reports that come through the mailing list, there are a
> lots of the type: X works here but not in this similar situation. This is
> IMHO a symptom of a bad design. A recent upgrade (I think it was from 6.5
> to 6.5.1 or something like that) helped a little bit but on the other hand
> some query optimizations that worked before didn't work anymore.
>

This is pretty scary.

However, I then read another reply only to find that Brett McCoy is converting
"hundreds of thousands of documents" with no PostgresSQL problems at all.
Brett indicates that:

> So I think PostgreSQL is quite solid and reliable. The only thing I think
> that is sorely needed in PostgreSQL is referential integrity constraints
> like foreign keys (although this can be emulated with triggers).
>

In fact, the lack of referential integrity constraints happens to be my
biggest concern - assuming the database is reliable, something that is proving
hard to determine.

Reading on, I see that "The Hermit Hacker" (love the name) also finds the
database to be reliable:

> Odd, I've been using PostgreSQL since v1.x for exactly this same reason,
> and we haven't had any problems with the database crashing since v6.x was
> released. Then again, the radius server opens/closes its connections as
> required, instead of relynig on one persistent connection, so maybe that
> helps, but that's just "application programming" vs backend...
>

There is a subtle implication that perhaps Jochen's problems are self
inflicted. In a later email, Jochen responds and asks if he is the only one
using "advanced features" and suggests that they may be the cause of his
problems. However, his list of "advanced features" is a little scary since
that are the very features that makes PostgreSQL so attractive in the first
place - and I fully intend to use them!

So which is is guys, is this database dependable for commercial use - or is an
academic oddity, worth watching but not using?

Any other success or failure stories would be really helpful....

Is PostgresSQL ready for prime time, or is it limpware?

Steve

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PS This thread was started in pgsql-general, I cross posted to pgsql-novice as
I am sure that some readers of that group would be interested in this topic.
If you want to comment, please reply to pgsql-general(at)postgreSQL(dot)org, I don't
want to fork the thread!