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

bnichols(at)ca(dot)afilias(dot)info (Brad Nicholson) writes:
> 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.

You clearly haven't done it using eRServer ;-).

I am as "pro-having-in-place-upgrades" as it comes, but it should be
noted that upgrading via Slony-I was one of the intended use cases in
its design, and that use case has certainly been successfully
addressed.

It is by no mean obvious that we will see, any time soon, an in-place
upgrade that doesn't have big enough caveats in it[1] that you're
won't still be left with a highly non-insignificant amount of effort.

Footnotes:

[1] For instance, what if the process doesn't allow you to keep
replication 'running'? Upgrading a cluster of 4 replicated nodes
might *still* involve redoing 3 of them, which means that nothing was
materially diminished from the former "**massive** undertaking."
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