Vince Vielhaber wrote:
I'm not disagreeing with you on testing. I've seen the announcments. Justin Clift just posted them again. But, as far as I've seen there are no real scientific tests that anyone here has posted. I've seen the occasional post with db_bench. You asked "To what standards?" I've not seen any standards that are meaningful. Maybe I'm just not looking.<snip>So you've been running these unscientific tests you're telling us about being so successful for "some months"? Vince.I open my mouth and insert foot: Where do I get any of these scientific tests to determine if the latest and greatest 7.3.x will not fall down on my favorite Unix?If you're looking for a tool to test with, there was an announcement here not too long ago for one. But it goes beyond just running a test suite against it. Many of the available tools are designed to test what works and how well it works. Testing goes beyond that. You want to know what doesn't work, does the database return to a normal state if the unthinkable happens (eg. Tom's suggestion of yanking the plug), how about loss of network communications or sudden intermittant communication? Or the function that may not be checking its input that well - when it fails is everything ok or did that transaction someone else was in the middle of get blown away? A gal that used to do MSDOS testing for MS (Jen something, don't recall her last name) would pull a floppy out in the middle of read or write and found a certain sequence would either hose the floppy, get the system to reboot (don't recall the exact details, it's been YEARS).
Any benchmarks/tests that someone posts are going to be subjective anyway. No one seems to be using the same tool. The osdb is step in the right direction, but I've not really seen anyone using it. The regressions are the only thing that I can see and run. It would be nice if there were a few people that had test setups that could post benchmarks/tests, so that we could see how things look for each release.
(i.e.: on the 5GB test, it did this; when I cut the power and turned it back onn it did this and this.)
When I download, install, and use postgresql, I take it on faith that it will perform as the developers say that it does. Maybe this is a bad thing, but I don't think so My use of it is very meager at the best so I don't have a lot to worry about. If I had loads of data and mission critical apps I would probably test a lot, but I don't.
All I'm saying is to cut them some slack and give them some ideas to test until there is a really good testing/benchmarking tool that everyone can use that won't be as subjective.
I personally want this to succeed. After having to use MySQL for a class project, I don't really want to use it again. I had to use because it was the only cross platform tool. Not everyone in the class was running linux or xBSD, so I had to go with MySQL. From what I've seen, It looks like I'll have to anyhow because that's what many job ads are looking for.
I believe Oracle used the excuse that PostgreSQL was unproven, when they complained about its use for the .org registry. What we may think about Windows being fragile and being a piece of crap doesn't really matter. People are using it and it's at least doing they want.
I've probably not said this before, but I appreciate all the hard work that everyone puts into this project.
James Hubbard
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
