Received: from localhost (maia-2.hub.org [200.46.204.187]) by postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 593E59FA305 for ; Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:59:29 -0300 (ADT) Received: from postgresql.org ([200.46.204.71]) by localhost (mx1.hub.org [200.46.204.187]) (amavisd-maia, port 10024) with ESMTP id 84066-02 for ; Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:59:20 -0300 (ADT) X-Greylist: from auto-whitelisted by SQLgrey-1.7.4 Received: from main2.mycybernet.net (main2.mycybernet.net [209.222.63.140]) by postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A3F869FA392 for ; Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:59:20 -0300 (ADT) Received: from 227-54-222-209.mycybernet.net ([209.222.54.227] helo=phlogiston.dydns.org) by main2.mycybernet.net with esmtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1I1P43-0002lK-QX for pgsql-performance@postgresql.org; Thu, 21 Jun 2007 11:59:19 -0400 Received: by phlogiston.dydns.org (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 6584D4050; Thu, 21 Jun 2007 11:59:14 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 11:59:14 -0400 From: Andrew Sullivan To: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org Subject: Re: Volunteer to build a configuration tool Message-ID: <20070621155914.GW5500@phlogiston.dyndns.org> References: <1182298719.4482.133.camel@ipso.snappymail.ca> <7621.1182318230@sss.pgh.pa.us> <9001.1182323187@sss.pgh.pa.us> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.9i X-Virus-Scanned: Maia Mailguard 1.0.1 X-Archive-Number: 200706/471 X-Sequence-Number: 25504 On Thu, Jun 21, 2007 at 03:14:48AM -0400, Greg Smith wrote: > "The Oracle Way" presumes that you've got such a massive development staff > that you can solve these problems better yourself than the community at > large, and then support that solution on every platform. Not that Greg is suggesting otherwise, but to be fair to Oracle (and other large database vendors), the raw partitions approach was also a completely sensible design decision back when they made it. In the late 70s and early 80s, the capabilities of various filesystems were wildly uneven (read the _UNIX Hater's Handbook_ on filesystems, for instance, if you want an especially jaundiced view). Moreover, since it wasn't clear that UNIX and UNIX-like things were going to become the dominant standard -- VMS was an obvious contender for a long time, and for good reason -- it made sense to have a low-level structure that you could rely on. Once they had all that code and had made all those assumptions while relying on it, it made no sense to replace it all. It's now mostly mature and robust, and it is probably a better decision to focus on incremental improvements to it than to rip it all out and replace it with something likely to be buggy and surprising. The PostgreSQL developers' practice of sighing gently every time someone comes along insisting that threads are keen or that shared memory sucks relies on the same, perfectly sensible premise: why throw away a working low-level part of your design to get an undemonstrated benefit and probably a whole lot of new bugs? A -- Andrew Sullivan | ajs@crankycanuck.ca In the future this spectacle of the middle classes shocking the avant- garde will probably become the textbook definition of Postmodernism. --Brad Holland