Subject: PostgreSQL web site

From: Naz Gassiep <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 03:41:14 +1000

Just a suggestion, why don't the web admins turn mod_gzip on? There are 
no downsides, and it would likely make a fairly large impact on 
bandwidth bills. Think of all the people browsing the PG documentation 
(myself included). Not only would bandwidth bills go down, 
responsiveness on the docs would be higher as well.

Even if there is no bandwidth saving (if your b/w is free for instance), 
I'm of the opinion that mod_gzip and mod_deflate should be used unless 
there is a compelling reason not to.

Sorry if this has been discussed before, but I thought it was worth 
mentioning on the off chance it hadn't.

- Naz.

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From: "Joshua D. Drake" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 11:25:19 -0700

> mentioning on the off chance it hadn't.

Actually that is a very good question... why are we not using mod_deflate?

Joshua D. Drake

> 
> - Naz.
> 
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
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---

From: "Magnus Hagander" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 20:29:18 +0200

> > Just a suggestion, why don't the web admins turn mod_gzip on? There 
> > are no downsides, and it would likely make a fairly large impact on 
> > Even if there is no bandwidth saving (if your b/w is free for 
> > instance), I'm of the opinion that mod_gzip and mod_deflate 
> should be 
> > used unless there is a compelling reason not to.
> > 

Good question. It's definitly worth investigating. It does add load to
the server, but not all that much. And if we have the space (need to
check that on some of the boxen) we could set up pre-compressed static
images and that argument would go away..

//Magnus

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From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 14:40:39 -0400

> Good question. It's definitly worth investigating.

What are we talking about here --- some hack to make users' web browsers
decompress pages on-the-fly?  How much does that slow down the browsing
experience, if you've got an old slow PC?  (I can believe that if you've
got a fast PC and a slow internet connection, it could make things
faster overall ... but the breakeven point is not obvious.)  What are
the odds that people using older browsers will be locked out entirely?

			regards, tom lane

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From: Oleg Bartunov <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 22:48:58 +0400 (MSD)

Also,

I'd like to see PDA version of web site and archives. Current design 
is very inconvenient.

 	Oleg
On Mon, 28 Aug 2006, Magnus Hagander wrote:

> TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate
>       subscribe-nomail command to [email-masked] so that your
>       message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
>

 	Regards,
 		Oleg
_____________________________________________________________
Oleg Bartunov, Research Scientist, Head of AstroNet (www.astronet.ru),
Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow University, Russia
Internet: [email-masked], http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/
phone: +007(495)939-16-83, +007(495)939-23-83

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From: Naz Gassiep <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 05:09:06 +1000

regards, tom lane

I have been using mod_deflate for years on my web server, and have yet
to notice _any_ difference on even very old hardware. Furthermore, the
additional load to the server is quite small.

If you are concerned about widespread impact on users, consider that
slashdot and google are both mod_deflated.

- Naz.

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From: "John Hansen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 05:10:46 +1000

Tom Lane Wrote:
> What are we talking about here --- some hack to make users' web browsers decompress pages on-the-fly?  How much > does that slow down the browsing experience, if you've got an old slow PC?  (I can believe that if you've got a > fast PC and a slow internet connection, it could make things faster overall ... but the breakeven point is not 
> obvious.)  What are the odds that people using older browsers will be locked out entirely?

Documents are only compressed if the browser requests one, so nobody would get locked out.
And for the odd users with a slow PC, they would probably already have cofigured their browser so it doesn't request compressed documents.

Kind Regards,

John

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From: Naz Gassiep <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 05:11:54 +1000

regards, tom lane

Oh, and there is no chance that older browsers are locked out,
mod_deflate and mod_gzip (gzip is the apache 1.3 module, deflate is for
apache 2) both only compress if they find that the browser supports it.
That being said, gzipped content was supported by browsers since the
netscape 3 days.

Regards,

- Naz

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From: "Magnus Hagander" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 21:12:30 +0200

> What are we talking about here --- some hack to make users' 
> web browsers decompress pages on-the-fly? 
Yes.

> How much does that 
> slow down the browsing experience, if you've got an old slow 
> PC?  (I can believe that if you've got a fast PC and a slow 
> internet connection, it could make things faster overall ... 
> but the breakeven point is not obvious.) 

In most cases it's faster or unnoticably slower. At the speed your
machine would have to be to notice the problem, I don't think you can
load a modern-enough browser to actually look at the site.

> What are the odds 
> that people using older browsers will be locked out entirely?

They should be zero, if you use mod_deflate.
The browser sends an Accept-encoding: deflate (or similar, I'm not 100%
on the name of the header, and too lazy to look it up). If this is not
present in the request, an uncompressed version of the page is sent back
to the browser.

//Magnus

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From: Naz Gassiep <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 05:13:57 +1000

> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
I generally only compress HTML and other text formats ignoring images, 
PDFs and other binary data. I would think this would have a huge impact 
on the PG site, which would deliver a lot of text serving documentation
Regards,
- Naz

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From: "Joshua D. Drake" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:15:04 -0700

> images and that argument would go away..

we can configure deflate so that it only compresses the html not the images.

Joshua D. Drake

--

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From: "Joshua D. Drake" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:17:52 -0700

Tom Lane wrote:
> decompress pages on-the-fly? 

No it is not a hack. With HTTP1.1 browers have the ability to compress 
and decompress on the fly. This is done in the negotiation between

 > How much does that slow down the browsing
> experience, if you've got an old slow PC?

Well good question. How slow are we talking? If we are talking a AMD 300 
people are likely not using broadband and it wouldn't matter anyway 
because either way they are use to slow.

>  (I can believe that if you've

None. Because it will fall back to 1.0 if your browser doesn't support 
it. The browser will negotiate with the web server to determine the best 
route to retrieve the data.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

--

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From: "Joshua D. Drake" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:19:05 -0700

Oleg Bartunov wrote:
> Also,
> 
> I'd like to see PDA version of web site and archives. Current design is 
> very inconvenient.

Egad... what a pain. Please feel free to work one up for us, but a PDA 
version is pretty much a pain in the arse for little benefit.

Sincerely,

Josuha D. Drake

--

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From: "John Hansen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 05:19:13 +1000

Joshua D. Drake Wrote

> we can configure deflate so that it only compresses the html 

I think he meant, pre compressed html pages.

Eg,:

index.html
index.html.gz

etc...

... John

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From: Naz Gassiep <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 05:29:41 +1000

John Hansen wrote:

Joshua D. Drake Wrote

we can configure deflate so that it only compresses the html
not the images.

Eg,:

index.html
index.html.gz

etc...

Oh, thats a bad idea, I think, as it would hugely increase the
maintenance work on the site, for a marginal gain in server
performance. The load increase really is minimal. If our servers are so
close to breaking point that this is an issue then we'll need new ones
very soon anyway.

Regards,

- Naz

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From: "Joshua D. Drake" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:34:33 -0700

>> index.html
>> index.html.gz
>>
>> etc...
>>
>>   
> Oh, thats a bad idea, I think, as it would hugely increase the maintenance work 
> on the site, for a marginal gain in server performance. The load increase really 
> is minimal. If our servers are so close to breaking point that this is an issue 
> then we'll need new ones very soon anyway.

Yeah... no. Mod_deflate will allow auto-negotiation so that the 
information can be dealt with either way. No reason to increase the 
workload.

--

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From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 15:45:38 -0400

> present in the request, an uncompressed version of the page is sent back

Got it.  Thanks for the explanation.

			regards, tom lane

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From: "Magnus Hagander" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 21:48:19 +0200

> > performance. The load increase really is minimal. If our 
> servers are 
> > so close to breaking point that this is an issue then we'll 
> need new ones very soon anyway.
> 
> Yeah... no. Mod_deflate will allow auto-negotiation so that 
> the information can be dealt with either way. No reason to 
> increase the workload.

We're nowhere near the load that our static servers can deliver. Even
during release time, when it increases sometimes hundredfold.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't optimize when we can do so at trivial
cost, though.

//Magnus

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From: "Joshua D. Drake" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:56:53 -0700

> That doesn't mean we shouldn't optimize when we can do so at trivial

Well more specifically, this will be a great boon for lowering bandwidth 
requirements on both sides of the content delivery.

Joshua D. Drake

--

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From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 16:12:24 -0400

> we can configure deflate so that it only compresses the html not the images.

One would certainly hope so, since the images are compressed already.

			regards, tom lane

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From: Oleg Bartunov <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 00:28:28 +0400 (MSD)

> version is pretty much a pain in the arse for little benefit.

As a first step, changing CSS optimized for PDA would be ok. Archives is
an our knowledgebase and sometimes I need to search/read them using my 
PDA (it's 640x480). But I don't insist :)

 	Regards,
 		Oleg

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From: Devrim GUNDUZ <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 17:22:22 +0300

Hello,

On Tue, 2006-08-29 at 00:28 +0400, Oleg Bartunov wrote:
> > Egad... what a pain. Please feel free to work one up for us, but a 
> > PDAversion is pretty much a pain in the arse for little benefit.
> 
> As a first step, changing CSS optimized for PDA would be ok. Archives
> is an our knowledgebase and sometimes I need to search/read them using
> my PDA (it's 640x480). 

I want a lynx and links version of the PostgreSQL website, please ;)

Cheers,
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From: "Dave Page" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 15:44:06 +0100

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] 
> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Devrim GUNDUZ
> Sent: 29 August 2006 15:22
> To: Oleg Bartunov
> Cc: Joshua D. Drake; Magnus Hagander; Naz Gassiep; 
> [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: [pgsql-www] PostgreSQL web site
> 
> Hello,
> 

<joke tagtype="just to make sure it's obvious">And I'd like a video of
the conference highlights</joke>

:-)

/D

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From: Devrim GUNDUZ <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 18:12:30 +0300

Hello,

> the conference highlights</joke> 

/me hides :-D