Re: Question: Who's Using Postgres

Some info for Corey-

We're not in production yet, but our application needs to scale up by about
70MB per year for each customer we add. All of our customers have about 10
years worth of history to start with, So I figured them to be roughly 1GB
each initially. Since our "short list" is for about 35 customers, I mocked
up a test database with 35GB of test data & had some family members pound
the web site with queries for a few hours. The response time was very
reasonable. Our demo site has a much smaller database behind it, but the
data was generated by the same random routines that created the large
database, so it shows roughly what sort of application we're running
(http://www.doxpop.com) Performance seems to be about on par with
SQL-server & Oracle, and I've never crashed the database unless I'm abusing
root privilege while stupid.

Performance and reliability is just not a problem, and you can find it in
many products. I think the more important issue is support, and that's where
the open-source community leaves the commercial sector in the dust.

Here is my support experience:

When I used MS SQL-server and Oracle in my last job, if I logged a support
call, I'd be lucky to get a response within a day. Of course there is no
support outside of normal office hours unless you pony up big money. If I
had an interesting problem, it could take days to get escalated up to the
people who understood & enjoyed challenging problems. -And of course even
"standard" support was pretty pricey.

When I was just starting out with PostgreSQL, I *really* screwed up my
database with some dumb last-minute changes at 11:30 PM the night before a
sales demo, I compounded the problem by moving my WAL files & generally
doing many of the things you shouldn't do. I posted frantic requests for
help, and received the help I needed at about 2AM. By 3AM, I had received
clarification after a second round of questions and by 5AM I was ready for
the demo. Around 6AM, two of the developer/guru people had lent their
expertise as well. Not only did I get good support in the middle of the
night, I also got the personal attention of two developers during the time
that most support folks are still stumbling around in search of caffeine. I
don't think you can buy that kind of support anywhere.

PostgreSQL is a part of our competitive advantage. Of course we try to give
back to the community by spending a little time each day being a part of
that unusual 365 X 24 support staff on lists like this, but the time spent
is minor compared to the savings- and our participation makes us better
administrators.

-Nick
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Nick Fankhauser

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nickf(at)doxpop(dot)com Phone 1.765.965.7363 Fax 1.765.962.9788
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