Re: Vertica targeting PostgreSQL users

On 11/20/2017 03:03 PM, Peter Geoghegan wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 20, 2017 at 1:23 PM, Simon Riggs <simon(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
>> I believe you just made up "fake news" about 2ndQuadrant.
>>
>> Please explain your source of this information, or retract and apologise now.
> I also think that JD misrepresented 2ndQPostgres, which I gather is a
> set of backpatches for each stable release (it would be nice if that
> was open source, but that's beside the point).
I am certainly not intending to misrepresent anyone but the fact that it
isn't open source is exactly the point.

"""
The majority of features now developed are developed by the needs of not
PostgreSQL.Org but the needs of 2Q, EDB customers or even Amazon (in a
different vein).
"""

Nothing wrong with it not being open source but it is clearly driven by
a need to build up their subscription model.

>
> I think it's reasonable for a small number of users to want to get
> this or that critical performance feature without upgrading major
> version. I did this on an ad-hoc basis for 2ndQuadrant several years
> ago, usually for customers that really needed it.

Yep, good for them. It is a great business model.

> Isn't this kind of customization a big advantage of open source? When
> a user is screaming for smoother I/O from checkpoints on their
> enormous mission critical database, for example, are you really going
> to tell them that they're wrong for wanting something like this? That
> can amount to real downtime.

You are absolutely correct and I agree with you.

>
> Some full upgrades require a lot of planning, on account of changes to
> the catalogs and possibly on disk representation, but a lot of things
> don't need that. We've made huge progress in the last number of
> releases on performance, often by adding things that don't care about
> on-disk representation at all. While we as a community are better at
> judging risk than users collectively, that isn't necessarily true of
> individual users. I find it easy to believe that something like
> 2ndQPostgres could make sense in a small number of individual special
> cases, where there are already real problems, and the user really
> knows what they're doing.

Nobody is arguing that, my original post (and follow up post) defended
what 2Q (and EDB) are doing.

I reread my original email and the only point of contention that I can
find is here:

... the bad news is both of these companies are move their clients to
their closed platforms as soon as possible

Which was badly worded on my part but I don't think is inaccurate. We
know EDB does this and I have had conversations with 2Q about their
closed platform and although they are not doing exactly what EDB is
doing you yourself posted that they are developing patches for back
branches that are closed, not open. That is a bummer for the community
but the reason they would do that is twofold:

1. Customer demand (see original post)
2. Revenue generation (see original post)

To use a term from Simon, the only "FakeNews" here is that people are
trying to make my post into something it wasn't.

Thanks,

JD

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