Re: PostgreSQL on Novell Netware 6.5.

>> > They stopped at 7.2.4 because "they're finishing some usefull APIs,
>> > which'll make the port much more "easy"."
>>
>> Will this involve using a Linux kernel ;)
>
> :) No, a NW kernel with a POSIX library. This'll be great, because
> :you'll can run powerfull opensource software with an enterprise-class
> NOS. Another option...

Well, the "pthreads" seem to be working just fine.

For all my work that most people would do in C/C++, I do in assembler,
and the POSIX support in NetWare now is providing some very nice APIs in
NetWare 6.0 and 6.5 that simply weren't available on NetWare 4.x and
earlier (NetWare 5.x has some of this, and Novell has been working hard to
move in this direction).

> Clustering support (32 x 32), stable & consistent file system (Novell's
> Storage System, forget the old Tradition File System (very mature &
> stable, but it doesn't fit the current storage necessity)), security &
> stability (our servers is counting 700+ days).

I hosted over 500 internet sites (HTTP (Apache), DNS, SMTP/POP3, FTP,
NNTP, Oracle, various Java services, PERL, etc.) on NetWare 5 across two
different /24 address spaces, and the server (yes, all of this was done
with a single Pentium III server with 512 MBs of RAM) was fast and reliable
with minimal maintenance.

The new file system (NSS) cuts down the boot time since volume mounts
always complete in less than 1 second as opposed to the "Traditional File
System" (TFS) which required approximately 5 to 10 minutes to mount.

NSS is a journaling system, which I've not been able to break yet by
simulating power outages during busy times. When the next release of
PostgreSQL is ready for NetWare, I'm going to try to break it in this way
as well (by making it very busy with many simultaneous write, index, and
vacuum operations before "pulling the plug"). So far I've found that
Oracle 8i on NetWare was quite good at handling this and the worst that
ever happened (at least in my testing) was that there was a cut-off point
where newly written records were lost.

I'm not pleased with Oracle's decision to discontinue support for
NetWare, and PostgreSQL fits that void very well (except for not having
table spaces, but I can live with that), and so I anxiously await the new
version of PostgreSQL so that I can proceed with some rather large web-
based projects that have been in the planning and research stages for
approximately 3 years now.

Unfortunately I simply can't use MySQL because they don't have views,
and there are some data integrity problems (e.g., numbers getting truncated
silently instead of an error being returned, etc.).

> It's a valuable addition to the Novell community, but it's also an good
> addition to the PostgreSQL community, but of course, when everything is
> 100% done. ;)

I agree wholeheartedly that both the Novell and PostgreSQL user and
developer communities will benefit greatly from this. From a marketing
perspective, both organizations will also benefit by gaining additional
exposure.

--
Randolf Richardson - rr(at)8x(dot)ca
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Please do not eMail me directly when responding
to my postings in the newsgroups.