Re: PostgreSQL vs Firebird SQL

Hello,

Le 10/02/2016 08:43, Chris Travers a écrit :
> I have never seen database corruption on PostgreSQL that was not a
> result of either:
> 1. Use cases WAY out of the ordinary (and then only years ago and I
> reported a bug on this and it was very quickly fixed)
> 2. Hardware problems
> 3. Heat management problems (sticking a db server in a hot closet, and
> then only indexes were corrupted).
>
> I do think on decent hardware you will have no trouble. In other words,
> outside of horrible abuse, PostgreSQL does very well.

Yes, I've seen more than horrible abuses... and I can firmly confirm
that PostgreSQL behaves very reliably, in my humble experience with
PostgreSQL.
Let me tell you about one of the worst use cases I've encountered. I had
set up a server (it was actually my desktop machine that I abandoned on
site, with the name "server" quickly written on it, running with a
Debian Stable GNU/Linux and a PostgreSQL cluster) on one of my clients'
site, in West Africa. A few months after, a colleague called me on the
phone, he was complaining about the server not restarting. He forgot to
mention a few details:
- the power was going down about once to twice per hour during five to ten
minutes each time;
- the UPS battery was dead, it provided about half a second of power during
failures;
- the floor was carefully bloomed daily, but without sprinkling water
on the floor, so that all the laterite dust was floating in the air.

During this phone call, a power failure happened. He told me "I must
restart the server, please hold on", and then I heard a strange noise,
like someone repeatedly banging with a hammer. When he resumed our
telephonic conversation, a few seconds later, I asked him about that
noise; he said "oh, yes, I need to hammer on the power button of the
server; otherwise it won't start"...

Some time later, I did a mission on site. The situation of the poor
little server was absolutely horrible: it was covered with red laterite
dust, the inside of the machine was all red and dusty, the grids in
front of the fans had totally rusted within a few months; people were
literally hammering on it, for the power button was stuck with fine
dust; temperature was around 30°C to 45°C, depending on the season, no
or so few air conditioning, and moisture often close to 100% (you know,
when you see condensation happening indoor, indoor rain is an
interesting phenomena).
I carefully dismantled the machine, cleaned it thoroughly, we moved it
in a slightly cooler area (the boss's office), trying to find a power
outlet which would be stable enough...

So, the context of was, I think, way outside of what I would call a
horrible abuse; but despite these conditions, PostgreSQL did very well,
there has never been any data loss, it was used daily for
mission-critical operations.


> So there are my $0.02

And these were my small 0.02€ ;)

À+
Pierre

PS: sorry Chris, I didn't pay attention while replying: I replied to you
only, instead of the list => corrected, sorry for the double entry in
your mailbox.

PPS: how should I behave on this list: should I systematically "reply to
all", or just "reply" to the list?  I'm used to a number of mailing
lists where a simple "reply" automatically replies to the list, and the
rule obliges you to *only* use "reply".



> On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 5:10 AM, ioan ghip <ioan@pangea-comm.com
> <mailto:ioan@pangea-comm.com>> wrote:
>
>     I have a Firebird SQL database running on one of my servers which
>     has about 50k inserts, about 100k updates and about 30k deletes
>     every day. There are about 4 million records in 24 tables. I have a
>     bunch of stored procedures, triggers, events and views that I'm using.
>     Firebird works fairly well, but from time to time the database gets
>     corrupted and I couldn't figure out yet (after many years of
>     running) what's the reason. When this happens I run "gfix -mend
>     -full -ignore", backup and restore the db and everything is fine
>     until next problem in a week, or a month.
>
>
> Is this running as an embedded engine or a standalone server?  One thing
> about Firebird is that since it is embeddable, in that mode other
> application bugs could corrupt the database.  In the other case, I would
> expect you may want to run hardware diagnostics to rule out hardware
> problems going forward.  If you find hardware problems fix them first,
> then look further.
>
> But the low hanging possible things to look at here are moving from an
> embedded mode to a standalone server if applicable, and checking out
> your hardware.  If these turn out not to be the problem, then I would
> recommend moving.
>
>     I never used PostgreSQL. Yesterday I installed it on my development
>     machine and after few tests I saw that it's fairly easy to use.
>
>     Does anyone have experience with both, Firebird and PostgreSQL? Is
>     PostgreSQL way better performing than Firebird? Is it worth the
>     effort moving away from Firebird? Would I gain stability and
>     increased performance?
>
>
> I have never seen database corruption on PostgreSQL that was not a
> result of either:
>
> 1.  Use cases WAY out of the ordinary (and then only years ago and I
> reported a bug on this and it was very quickly fixed)
> 2.  Hardware problems
> 3.  Heat management problems (sticking a db server in a hot closet, and
> then only indexes were corrupted).
>
> I do think on decent hardware you will have no trouble.  In other words,
> outside of horrible abuse, PostgreSQL does very well.
>
> The largest PostgreSQL database I have worked with had hundreds of
> tables, some containing over a hundred million rows, and took up 9TB+ of
> storage.  And it processed millions of inserts, deletes, and updates
> every day (24x7 scientific computing cluster processing the data in the
> db).   Granted at that scale performance requires very good hardware and
> an attention to detail but with those it runs fine.
>
> I do have experience on both and am generally happier with PostgreSQL
> but I can imagine there are cases where the move may be painful.  Stored
> procedures are one (though probably not so bad).  The bigger issue I
> think you will run into is case folding.  Firebird follows the SQL
> standard and folds to upper case.  The PostgreSQL community really
> doesn't like this and folds to lower case.  This can require some
> changes in application code to make work properly.
>
> So there are my $0.02
>
>
>     Thanks.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Best Wishes,
> Chris Travers
>
> Efficito:  Hosted Accounting and ERP.  Robust and Flexible.  No vendor
> lock-in.
> http://www.efficito.com/learn_more

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