5 ms·

PostgreSQL 9.0 Is Now Available

132 points by spahl 16y ago

zokier 16y ago
Bit premature imho. The offical release day is tomorrow, and these kind of announcements only cause confusion and do no good for anyone. But awesome job PG team, it's my favorite SQL server.
- mahmud 16y ago
  > it's my favorite SQL server Agreed. It Excels in what it does and hast fastest Access times. [edit: didn't mean to start a pun thread.]
  - gaius 16y ago
    Word.
    - mwexler 16y ago
      I didn't want to laugh at these last 2 comments... but it slipped out anyway. Nicely done.
      - pasbesoin 16y ago
        I really shouldn't indulge in this on HN, but One might Note that it has a good Outlook. EDIT: Downvotes feel good, in a way. Too much focus on karma, recently, amongst a subset of the current HN population. Figured I'd been around long enough to appreciate a rare moment of humor from another old-timer, and dip my oar in -- even if in a slightly ill-advised fashion. The caffeine made me do it! Now, on to work...
        cool-RR 16y ago
        Downvotes are the new upvotes.
        pasbesoin 16y ago
        It appears you all are determined to absolutely bury me. Fine, I guess I asked for it. But, HN used to have a bit better sense of humor and camaraderie, particularly for those who didn't abuse the privilege. I guess things really have changed, here. Maybe just par for the course, with the community having grown so much -- most people aren't familiar with most other user ID's, anymore.
        deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
        moron4hire 16y ago
        Well, I think the humor was appropriate. This isn't a corporate board meeting, it's supposed to be a community of developers and entrepreneurs. All communities need inside jokes (among other things) to help create a sense of cohesion.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - j2d2j2d2 16y ago
    Really? You capitalize excel and access in every day use?
rsbrown 16y ago
These two new features sound particularly interesting to me: Streaming Replication: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/warm-standby.html#STREAMING-REPLICATION http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/warm-standby.html#... Hot Standby: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/hot-standby.html http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/hot-standby.html
- IgorPartola 16y ago
  I've never delved into this domain before, but why is it that it is so hard to create multi-master replication for Postgres? We were considering it at work, and it seems the only solutions that provide that are unmaintained third party scripts written in Perl/Ruby, etc. MySQL has the NDB cluster solution, but that is way too restrictive as everything must be kept in memory.
  - olefoo 16y ago
    It's hard because of the consistency guarantees that PostgreSQL makes. If you need true multi-master replication (you probably don't) the best solution is to use some form of queue to manage writes across the cluster. The DRBD solutions sound awesome but trade one SPOF for another, and have drawbacks in terms of speed (replicating block devices makes them slow) and risk (network latency, write contention) and are limited to at most two masters. If you find yourself needing a replication solution beyond hot standby; it's possible that PostgreSQL isn't the right tool for the job.
  - die_sekte 16y ago
    pgpool-II seems to be well maintained and simple. I'm not sure what you wish for, but pgpool-II seems to be it. I think MySQL's swappable storage engines make building replication a tad easier. Actually, I have no idea.
  - viraptor 16y ago
    NDB cluster is not something I'd recommend to anyone. At least it wasn't 2 years ago. I got random failures that only people at #mysql-ndb on freenode could explain, very cryptic log files, weird configuration bugs reproduced by tens of people and not fixed for years, etc. It's even harder to maintain than multi-master. You know what can fail in multi-master and how to check it - 99% of cases is just one of the nodes stopping accepting the replication stream for some reason. You can check that easily, because you see secs_behind > 0 on the slave status - everything else ends up in the error log. With NDB, the situation is much harder. You've got 3 types of nodes that can fail, you don't easily see if one of them failed (I had situations where every node was "connected", both data nodes were "live", but the manager (or was it frontend...) decided they're out of sync and cannot deal with them at all). Effectively you've got a network of independent nodes which can fail and not output any error - it's another node that shows you only the effect of such failure. I could not find any way to reliably monitor the cluster status and there are not nearly enough information on the web to solve the problems on your own. #mysql-ndb is great, but the people there can give you a patch to your database "to try if it fixes the problem" - problem that cannot be easily reproduced and causes the DB to stop working under a high load in the middle of the day - exactly when I need to DB to stay up. Multi-master was a lot less painful.
rb2k_ 16y ago
What I really like about PostgreSQL compared to e.g. MySQL is the support for partial indexes (http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.0/static/indexes-partial.html http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.0/static/indexes-partial.ht...). Especially when keeping normalized data, it allows the easy creation of an index without having the need to index ALL records and blow up the b+tree
cookiecaper 16y ago
I really strongly dislike Phoronix. I don't know why it hasn't been replaced yet.
- cowmixtoo 16y ago
  What are your specific beefs?
  - zokier 16y ago
    I'm not the OP, and I don't follow phoronix regularly, but it seems sensationalist at times.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - cookiecaper 16y ago
    It is absolutely littered with ads. I appreciate that Larabel wants to make a living and I'm all for that. However, the ads are intrusive and annoying. Every time I do a fresh install of a browser, Phoronix is the site that provokes me to go get AdBlock again. I don't usually mind or notice on other sites. Stories are often mistaken or exaggerated. "Steam on Linux Confirmed" while technically pedantically accurate is still misleading because everyone reads in to this like there was an official announcement, when really it was "confirmed" by Phoronix's anonymous source. They also may have pissed Valve off with this business and spoiled the fun for those who knew about the location of the in-development Steam Linux binaries. It's not just Steam, it's stuff like "HUGE HUGE MAJOR REGRESSIONS IN NEW RC". That's nice and all, but it's really jumping the gun and often turns out not to be anything at all really. On top of this, he should consult LKML or an IRC channel or some place with people who know what they are doing before he runs those kinds of things. Benchmarks are OK sometimes, but sometimes subtle factors make them rather misleading. This is usually pointed out in the message board thread associated with the story, but the story is never corrected and Larabel keeps running benchmarks that are dubious in nature. Once again, no shame in misunderstanding as long as you seek to clear it up. Larabel has a major propensity for making conclusions with very scant and/or unreliable data. And on top of all that, the writing is just really frustratingly bad. Things are worded in confusing ways, there are always lame quips for teasers. A headline will be something like "Gnome developers talk Shell at GUADEC" and the snippet will be "It is discussed". That is pretty annoying to me and just emphasizes the immaturity of the publication. I think that Larabel and Phoronix in general would be great if there was a bit more structure and professionalism about it. Larabel has his strengths and his weaknesses, as we all do. If he wants to be taken seriously, he should invite a handful of contributors with a penchant for accuracy, restraint, copy-editing, and not-annoying-the-users, give them equal authority over the process, and the site would be really good.
random42 16y ago
Any ideas when they plan to include materialized views? Last I checked it was part of this years GSoC.
- joevandyk 16y ago
  Pretty sure they already supported that in early versions....?
  - random42 16y ago
    No.. Unfortunately, they don't.
    - oomkiller 16y ago
      Looks like it's fairly straightforward to do it manually with triggers. http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Materalized_Views http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Materalized_Views
volkforlive 16y ago
Hello! What are the problems there have multimaster replication PostgreSQL v9? Is the problem solved update error, conflict, uniqueness, and delete? Thank you.

132 points by spahl 16y ago

Bit premature imho. The offical release day is tomorrow, and these kind of announcements only cause confusion and do no good for anyone. But awesome job PG team, it's my favorite SQL server.

mahmud 16y ago
> it's my favorite SQL server Agreed. It Excels in what it does and hast fastest Access times. [edit: didn't mean to start a pun thread.]
- gaius 16y ago
  Word.
  - mwexler 16y ago
    I didn't want to laugh at these last 2 comments... but it slipped out anyway. Nicely done.
    - pasbesoin 16y ago
      I really shouldn't indulge in this on HN, but One might Note that it has a good Outlook. EDIT: Downvotes feel good, in a way. Too much focus on karma, recently, amongst a subset of the current HN population. Figured I'd been around long enough to appreciate a rare moment of humor from another old-timer, and dip my oar in -- even if in a slightly ill-advised fashion. The caffeine made me do it! Now, on to work...
      - cool-RR 16y ago
        Downvotes are the new upvotes.
      - pasbesoin 16y ago
        It appears you all are determined to absolutely bury me. Fine, I guess I asked for it. But, HN used to have a bit better sense of humor and camaraderie, particularly for those who didn't abuse the privilege. I guess things really have changed, here. Maybe just par for the course, with the community having grown so much -- most people aren't familiar with most other user ID's, anymore.
        deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
        moron4hire 16y ago
        Well, I think the humor was appropriate. This isn't a corporate board meeting, it's supposed to be a community of developers and entrepreneurs. All communities need inside jokes (among other things) to help create a sense of cohesion.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- j2d2j2d2 16y ago
  Really? You capitalize excel and access in every day use?

rsbrown 16y ago

These two new features sound particularly interesting to me: Streaming Replication: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/warm-standby.html#STREAMING-REPLICATION http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/warm-standby.html#... Hot Standby: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/hot-standby.html http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/hot-standby.html

IgorPartola 16y ago
I've never delved into this domain before, but why is it that it is so hard to create multi-master replication for Postgres? We were considering it at work, and it seems the only solutions that provide that are unmaintained third party scripts written in Perl/Ruby, etc. MySQL has the NDB cluster solution, but that is way too restrictive as everything must be kept in memory.
- olefoo 16y ago
  It's hard because of the consistency guarantees that PostgreSQL makes. If you need true multi-master replication (you probably don't) the best solution is to use some form of queue to manage writes across the cluster. The DRBD solutions sound awesome but trade one SPOF for another, and have drawbacks in terms of speed (replicating block devices makes them slow) and risk (network latency, write contention) and are limited to at most two masters. If you find yourself needing a replication solution beyond hot standby; it's possible that PostgreSQL isn't the right tool for the job.
- die_sekte 16y ago
  pgpool-II seems to be well maintained and simple. I'm not sure what you wish for, but pgpool-II seems to be it. I think MySQL's swappable storage engines make building replication a tad easier. Actually, I have no idea.
- viraptor 16y ago
  NDB cluster is not something I'd recommend to anyone. At least it wasn't 2 years ago. I got random failures that only people at #mysql-ndb on freenode could explain, very cryptic log files, weird configuration bugs reproduced by tens of people and not fixed for years, etc. It's even harder to maintain than multi-master. You know what can fail in multi-master and how to check it - 99% of cases is just one of the nodes stopping accepting the replication stream for some reason. You can check that easily, because you see secs_behind > 0 on the slave status - everything else ends up in the error log. With NDB, the situation is much harder. You've got 3 types of nodes that can fail, you don't easily see if one of them failed (I had situations where every node was "connected", both data nodes were "live", but the manager (or was it frontend...) decided they're out of sync and cannot deal with them at all). Effectively you've got a network of independent nodes which can fail and not output any error - it's another node that shows you only the effect of such failure. I could not find any way to reliably monitor the cluster status and there are not nearly enough information on the web to solve the problems on your own. #mysql-ndb is great, but the people there can give you a patch to your database "to try if it fixes the problem" - problem that cannot be easily reproduced and causes the DB to stop working under a high load in the middle of the day - exactly when I need to DB to stay up. Multi-master was a lot less painful.

rb2k_ 16y ago

What I really like about PostgreSQL compared to e.g. MySQL is the support for partial indexes (http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.0/static/indexes-partial.html http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.0/static/indexes-partial.ht...). Especially when keeping normalized data, it allows the easy creation of an index without having the need to index ALL records and blow up the b+tree

cookiecaper 16y ago

I really strongly dislike Phoronix. I don't know why it hasn't been replaced yet.

cowmixtoo 16y ago
What are your specific beefs?
- zokier 16y ago
  I'm not the OP, and I don't follow phoronix regularly, but it seems sensationalist at times.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  It is absolutely littered with ads. I appreciate that Larabel wants to make a living and I'm all for that. However, the ads are intrusive and annoying. Every time I do a fresh install of a browser, Phoronix is the site that provokes me to go get AdBlock again. I don't usually mind or notice on other sites. Stories are often mistaken or exaggerated. "Steam on Linux Confirmed" while technically pedantically accurate is still misleading because everyone reads in to this like there was an official announcement, when really it was "confirmed" by Phoronix's anonymous source. They also may have pissed Valve off with this business and spoiled the fun for those who knew about the location of the in-development Steam Linux binaries. It's not just Steam, it's stuff like "HUGE HUGE MAJOR REGRESSIONS IN NEW RC". That's nice and all, but it's really jumping the gun and often turns out not to be anything at all really. On top of this, he should consult LKML or an IRC channel or some place with people who know what they are doing before he runs those kinds of things. Benchmarks are OK sometimes, but sometimes subtle factors make them rather misleading. This is usually pointed out in the message board thread associated with the story, but the story is never corrected and Larabel keeps running benchmarks that are dubious in nature. Once again, no shame in misunderstanding as long as you seek to clear it up. Larabel has a major propensity for making conclusions with very scant and/or unreliable data. And on top of all that, the writing is just really frustratingly bad. Things are worded in confusing ways, there are always lame quips for teasers. A headline will be something like "Gnome developers talk Shell at GUADEC" and the snippet will be "It is discussed". That is pretty annoying to me and just emphasizes the immaturity of the publication. I think that Larabel and Phoronix in general would be great if there was a bit more structure and professionalism about it. Larabel has his strengths and his weaknesses, as we all do. If he wants to be taken seriously, he should invite a handful of contributors with a penchant for accuracy, restraint, copy-editing, and not-annoying-the-users, give them equal authority over the process, and the site would be really good.

random42 16y ago

Any ideas when they plan to include materialized views? Last I checked it was part of this years GSoC.

joevandyk 16y ago
Pretty sure they already supported that in early versions....?
- random42 16y ago
  No.. Unfortunately, they don't.
  - oomkiller 16y ago
    Looks like it's fairly straightforward to do it manually with triggers. http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Materalized_Views http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Materalized_Views

volkforlive 16y ago

Hello! What are the problems there have multimaster replication PostgreSQL v9? Is the problem solved update error, conflict, uniqueness, and delete? Thank you.