Postgres in the Enterprise

Here's an article regarding open source databases in the news:

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,474127,00.asp

Seems more focused on MySQL ...

True but at least they got a mention this time.

Some of these articles leave out postgres completely.

Such lightweight reporting

I love how industry reporters always talk about "transaction capabilities" as if that is the only measure of a true DBMS. That should just be a given, not even a point of discussion. What about real data constraint features? What about capability to handle real business rules and logic?

Speaking of PostgreSQL in the enterprise, here are a couple of comments from the mailing list, discussing the supposed Great Weakness of open source database software: support and responsibility.

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsq...06/msg00932.php

and follow-ups:

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsq...06/msg00956.php
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|--- http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsq...06/msg00990.php
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|--- http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsq...06/msg00958.php

Comments?

All I can say is that the theoretical suing of the the vendor -- I hope a situation like that never takes place. Litigation has invaded every part of our lives it seems, and sometimes it ties up your hands and requires you to have alot of courage to take initiative even to do something like help someone in distress.

That was pretty interesting discussion.

That discussion made me recall the hot argument which I had with my boss for convincing him to get Linux machine instead of Windows 2000 server machine.

Boss had similar arguments. Vendor support. Upgradibility blah blah.

In our organization my boss ( IT Manager) is suppose to report to CEO and CEO in turn board of directors in some other country (UK, ours was an MNC ).

Now company had what you call *standards* like Exchange server / Windows 2000 server on which they were spending HUGE amount !!!

Boss didnt wanted to go with Linux cause he thought its against *standard*. I guess we have yet to reach stage where *nix or PostGres becomes *standard* in organizations.

Then in our audits, one of the point is about vendor support. Vendor gurantee of 99.99% availibility for servers. Now he was not sure about what to write in case of free software !!! And certainly audit is life and death for him.

Eventually I convinced him but I can assume, there are lots of ppl who just run away from open source software because of this !!!!

Any way out ??
JD

For rycamor :`

I didnt get reply to your last mail. My mailbox was full ? Can you resend mail ?

JD

Well it's all about perception.

The corporate people basically want a phone number they can call, in the event that their entire IT staff is gone. Basically they want a number they can call and say, "my server is broken and I don't know what's wrong with it and I want you to fix it."

Now Postgres has a number like that, but it's more comfortable to them to know that a gigantic vendor like Microsoft or Oracle is on the other end of the line who can supposedly throw their billions of dollars of resources into fixing the problem.

Whether it works that way in reality is another question, but I think that's the perception. They take comfort in brand names and big corporations.

I don't know how it is in India, but here in the States, many small business have been destroyed over the last 40 years, due to large corporations moving in and people switching to them. For example, in the restaurant business, I think the number is expected to jump to like 60%, up from 40%, of businesses that are chains/corporations.

Personally I think this is a tragedy. I'd eat at a family owned restaurant in a heartbeat before going to those cookie-cutter chain restaurants. The food is always better at the family owned business and you get something unique.

But unfortunatley people take comfort in going to TJI Friday's, because they know what to expect. Just like they take comfort in knowing they are buying Microsoft or Oracle.

It's true that the restaurant business is falling prey to America's reduced adventurousness in cultural matters. But in general, America is built on small businesses far more than most other countries. I live in Florida, where small business accounts for more than 50% of the economy, and I suspect that number is only going to be growing, as a result of the current big-business debacles.

I think another component of the software issue is simple misunderstanding of the true economies involved. To managers, and other semi-technical folk, their "horse sense" tells them it is impossible for someone to develop free software and be any good at it. If it is free, then it must be substandard. In fact they are mystified that open source software exists at all, because "how do they make a living?".

This thinking holds true for just about every other industry. But there is a big difference about software that many non-programmers don't understand. In any other industry there are certain "economies of scale", meaning that if you have 5,000 employees doing the same thing, then you can smooth out your operations better than if you have 50 employees. Also, replicating the same thing 50,000 times costs less per unit than replicating it 500 times.

Well, software stands all that on its ear. The evidence is that the more developers you get on a project, the less effective each individual developer can be. So ironically, the larger companies charge more per unit than the smaller, struggling companies. Think about it. Any vendor who comes up with a DBMS that is better, quicker, and more efficient than Oracle will probably still have to sell it for much less than Oracle. Yet, that is entirely possible, given the economies I mentioned.

Open source software is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Not needing a corporate structure, and not needing to protect "intellectual property", developers can individually be much more effective. There is no need for each to hide internals from the other, and there is actually much more incentive to format code correctly, and solve problems elegantly, because developers know that others will be looking.

Here's another article about enterprise use, this one talks about both databases and gives them equal time:

Link to Infoworld found on freebsdforums.com

http://staging.infoworld.com/articl...ntfriendly.html