5 ms·

Is that really true? Postgres is great, but it doesn't cater for _all_ use cases. For example, horizontal scalability is -- understandably for an ACID RDBMS --

Is that really true? Postgres is great, but it doesn't cater for _all_ use cases. For example, horizontal scalability is -- understandably for an ACID RDBMS -- not as trivial as it is for some document stores.

gaius 8y ago
Check out what Citus are doing with PG https://www.citusdata.com https://www.citusdata.com
- threeseed 8y ago
  That's a fork of PostgreSQL. So it doesn't help you when it comes to using cloud hosted services e.g. AWS or Azure. It's also a commercial product that isn't exactly cheap ($890/node).
  - stareatgoats 8y ago
    It's not a fork (according to their promotion), it's an 'extension', but not sure I can explain the difference. Their solution looks interesting but pricing wasn't very visible on their website, what you quote is prohibitive for me (where does it say?). But I at least assumed the 'open source' would be free.
    - threeseed 8y ago
      Pricing is available here: https://www.citusdata.com/pricing https://www.citusdata.com/pricing And the point still stands that this isn't core PostgreSQL. So you can't use managed services like AWS RDS with this. And you're reliant entirely on the vendor for support. So from the user perspective it is basically a fork.
      - stareatgoats 8y ago
        OK thanks for this. The product seems promising even if it is not core PG. I'd have to dive into the deep end and test drive to check if the trade-offs would be worthwhile. The 'open source version' seems free, so I guess I could at some point.
      - manigandham 8y ago
        PostgreSQL is completely open-source with no backing company so everyone is reliant on some vendor if they want support. It makes no difference that Citus is one of them, with some core PG devs onboard. Why would you talk about AWS RDS and then skip over Citus Cloud which is a managed service? If you consider this a fork then any plugin for PG is also a fork, which then makes it hard to have a productive discussion.
        threeseed 8y ago
        The reason I am talking about AWS RDS is because most companies aren't multi-cloud. Data needs to be housed and secured within that private VPC. And so Citus Cloud is irrelevant because it is an externally housed product. If Citus allowed their proprietary product to be run within existing clouds that could be something but it isn't. And again since it is a significant add-on i.e. beyond just a simple plugin that almost demands vendor support it is effectively a fork.
        manigandham 8y ago
        What does RDS have to do with being multi-cloud? It's a hosted offering which only works in AWS. And Citus Cloud does offer VPC connectivity so you can access it privately. As stated before, the extension is also open-source and you can run it in any cloud or datacenter yourself, for free. Why would you claim that's not allowed? You seem to be stuck on a strange intrepretation of vendor support when PG has no backing vendor, so you can pick whichever one you want. If you aren't comfortable with Citus and prefer AWS then that's fine, but you make the trade-off in the features as well. Not every managed postgres service chooses to support every PG extension so it's nothing unique in that regard, and is ultimately no different than the choices involved in picking any other database with vendor backing. You've posted several comments now that seem to show that you do not know much about Citus or are willingly misleading people about it. I'm not sure why but perhaps it would be better if you read up on the details or disclosed your angle more clearly.
    - manigandham 8y ago
      An extension means you're just running normal Postgres and load this on top. All of the normal features of Postgres are available and you can upgrade that as new versions are released without waiting for some other vendor to update their own specialized version of it. And yes, Citus is open-source and free for you to run yourself.
  - mslot 8y ago
    Citus is an open source plug-in that you load into vanilla PostgreSQL, similar to PostGIS and other extensions.

gaius 8y ago

Check out what Citus are doing with PG https://www.citusdata.com https://www.citusdata.com

threeseed 8y ago
That's a fork of PostgreSQL. So it doesn't help you when it comes to using cloud hosted services e.g. AWS or Azure. It's also a commercial product that isn't exactly cheap ($890/node).
- stareatgoats 8y ago
  It's not a fork (according to their promotion), it's an 'extension', but not sure I can explain the difference. Their solution looks interesting but pricing wasn't very visible on their website, what you quote is prohibitive for me (where does it say?). But I at least assumed the 'open source' would be free.
  - threeseed 8y ago
    Pricing is available here: https://www.citusdata.com/pricing https://www.citusdata.com/pricing And the point still stands that this isn't core PostgreSQL. So you can't use managed services like AWS RDS with this. And you're reliant entirely on the vendor for support. So from the user perspective it is basically a fork.
    - stareatgoats 8y ago
      OK thanks for this. The product seems promising even if it is not core PG. I'd have to dive into the deep end and test drive to check if the trade-offs would be worthwhile. The 'open source version' seems free, so I guess I could at some point.
    - manigandham 8y ago
      PostgreSQL is completely open-source with no backing company so everyone is reliant on some vendor if they want support. It makes no difference that Citus is one of them, with some core PG devs onboard. Why would you talk about AWS RDS and then skip over Citus Cloud which is a managed service? If you consider this a fork then any plugin for PG is also a fork, which then makes it hard to have a productive discussion.
      - threeseed 8y ago
        The reason I am talking about AWS RDS is because most companies aren't multi-cloud. Data needs to be housed and secured within that private VPC. And so Citus Cloud is irrelevant because it is an externally housed product. If Citus allowed their proprietary product to be run within existing clouds that could be something but it isn't. And again since it is a significant add-on i.e. beyond just a simple plugin that almost demands vendor support it is effectively a fork.
        manigandham 8y ago
        What does RDS have to do with being multi-cloud? It's a hosted offering which only works in AWS. And Citus Cloud does offer VPC connectivity so you can access it privately. As stated before, the extension is also open-source and you can run it in any cloud or datacenter yourself, for free. Why would you claim that's not allowed? You seem to be stuck on a strange intrepretation of vendor support when PG has no backing vendor, so you can pick whichever one you want. If you aren't comfortable with Citus and prefer AWS then that's fine, but you make the trade-off in the features as well. Not every managed postgres service chooses to support every PG extension so it's nothing unique in that regard, and is ultimately no different than the choices involved in picking any other database with vendor backing. You've posted several comments now that seem to show that you do not know much about Citus or are willingly misleading people about it. I'm not sure why but perhaps it would be better if you read up on the details or disclosed your angle more clearly.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    An extension means you're just running normal Postgres and load this on top. All of the normal features of Postgres are available and you can upgrade that as new versions are released without waiting for some other vendor to update their own specialized version of it. And yes, Citus is open-source and free for you to run yourself.
- mslot 8y ago
  Citus is an open source plug-in that you load into vanilla PostgreSQL, similar to PostGIS and other extensions.