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Calling Bullsh*t in Open Source communities

We are all human. We all lose our temper. We all have our moments of, "I really wish I could take that back". Of course not if you are not Linus Torvalds. Now everyone knows that Linus has a temper, that he is a foul mouth, lacks certain social graces and is generally one of the, if not the most important developers to surface in the last 20 years. Does …

postgres_fdw for 9.2

We have backported the postgres_fdw to 9.2. It is read only of course as the infrastructure for writes is not in 9.2 but it is usable. Enjoy it!

Postgres-FDW

The steaming pile that is Precise with kernel 3.2

I don't know if it is a mainline kernel problem but I can tell you that on Ubuntu Precise, Linux kernel 3.2 is a disaster for PostgreSQL. I am not even going to go into a huge rant about it. I am just posting the numbers. See for yourself. There should be a public service announcement about it.

before upgrade to 3.9

08:35:01 AM     CPU     %user     %nice   %system   %iowait    %steal …

Returning multiple results without a round trip

My blog on changes to the wire protocol [1] prompted this question from a reader:

"Would it be necessary to modify the wire protocol to support multiple query/result-set combinations per server round-trip? That is, to be able to send a hundred different queries (each with a different number and type of columns in the result set) and receive a hundred different results all in a single network round-trip? That is …

Modifying the backend protocol for 9.4/10.0.

A recent discussion on the lists about potentially incompatible changes to 9.4/10.0 of PostgreSQL the idea of things we wanted to do to the wire protocol in upcoming releases.

The wire protocol is the language spoken between a client and the server of postgresql. The majority of programming languages out there do not implement their own version of the protocol instead opting to bind to the C library libpq. There …

Considering PITRtools 1.4

We quietly released PITRTool 1.3 last week. This version has been in development for a long time and over the past 6 months became a priority to complete. There is one known minor issue that may or may not be fixed as it doesn't affect production usage in a meaningful way. Release 1.3 contiues to support all the way back to 8.2 with warm standby but we also now support …

Remembering to check the docs: Autovacuum

I was on a call very late last night with a good customer. Well, it was very early. They were having some performance problems and we were talking through how to resolve them before the EST wake up. It is late, we are all tired and of course there are too many people on the call.

So what is the problem? The problem is they weren't running Autovacuum. Now many …

GNU and the FSF should be split up

The FSF should be broken up.

Yes, I really did just write that. I believe the the FSF no longer fulfills its mission. Wait, let's back up a step. I can feel the torches started to be covered in pitch and the frankenstein cry of, "kill the heretic" starting to rumble through the old streets of the Free Software country. I am not here to say that the FSF is …

The Write Ahead Log: Essentials

WAL (acronym for the Write Ahead Log) is the mechanism that Postgres uses to implement durability (the D in ACID) of data changes in the face of a system crash. WAL is also a critical component for Postgres to provide binary replication as well as online binary backups.

In considerations of closed source development

Open Source development has a lot going for it, as Bruce Momjian readily points out in a recent blog [1]. However, I believe he missed some key points that are positive for closed source development. Bruce asserts that with Open Source development the developers are the face of the software. That is true but certainly isn't always a good thing. There is a reason that the majority of software development, …

Postgres and Open Source Experts

Calling Bullsh*t in Open Source communities

postgres_fdw for 9.2

The steaming pile that is Precise with kernel 3.2

Returning multiple results without a round trip

Modifying the backend protocol for 9.4/10.0.

Considering PITRtools 1.4

Remembering to check the docs: Autovacuum

GNU and the FSF should be split up

The Write Ahead Log: Essentials

In considerations of closed source development

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