Hi list,

No need to send out the press release :-), I was alreday grilled half
an hour by a French journalist about v8. He had apparently read an
interview of Marc Fournier somewhere.

Anyway, the journalist had a question about tablespaces. I told him it
enabled clustering on individual disks or arrays of disks. The
journalist then said that this seemed like a rather basic feature and
was surprised that PostgreSQL wasn't already able to do that in the
previous versions. Is that indeed the case or was there another
clustering mechanism before?

Thanks for any clues

---------------
Francois

Home page: http://www.monpetitcoin.com/

"If it's not from me, it's from Confucius" - Lao Tse

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From:	Josh Berkus
Subject:	Re: Technical question for a journalist
Date:	Fri, 7 Jan 2005 11:06:51 -0800

Francois,

> Anyway, the journalist had a question about tablespaces. I told him it
> enabled clustering on individual disks or arrays of disks. The
> journalist then said that this seemed like a rather basic feature and
> was surprised that PostgreSQL wasn't already able to do that in the
> previous versions. Is that indeed the case or was there another
> clustering mechanism before?

Well, there was the ad-hoc method.

Mostly, it wasn't done before because there wasn't much demand for it.
Tablespaces really aren't useful unless you have really large
(multi-gigabyte) databases and/or large arrays with lots of disks. Three
years ago, I think you could have counted the number of PG installations over
10GB on your fingers and toes.

Some databases, which really don't need tablespaces from a performance
perspective ... like MSSQL ... were forced to develop them because of their
use of raw disk partitions to store the database. This means that you can't
just move the database files when it outgrows the disk, you have to allocate
a new partition.

Also, our Tablespace feature is a bit more sophisticated than just dropping
the tables in a new location. That part I think (correct me if I'm wrong,
Gavin) was easy. The tough part was all the administrative tools and
recovery stuff to make it robust; to make sure, for example, that you can
restore a tablespace from backup even if the disk ceases to exist, and that
transactions are robust across tablespaces.

--
--Josh

Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

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From:	Jean-Christophe Arnu
Subject:	Re: Technical question for a journalist
Date:	Fri, 07 Jan 2005 18:09:48 +0100

Francois Suter m'expliquait (le 07.01.2005 16:41):

> Hi list,
>
> No need to send out the press release :-), I was alreday grilled half
> an hour by a French journalist about v8. He had apparently read an
> interview of Marc Fournier somewhere.
>
> Anyway, the journalist had a question about tablespaces. I told him it
> enabled clustering on individual disks or arrays of disks. The
> journalist then said that this seemed like a rather basic feature and
> was surprised that PostgreSQL wasn't already able to do that in the
> previous versions. Is that indeed the case or was there another
> clustering mechanism before?
>
Hi François,

I think it was(is) possible by linking (file system link) different
filenodes on different arrays/disks. This was a manual method and
difficult (or at least not possible with only the official PG utilities)
to dump/restore the spreadness of tables along the disks. This is quite
laborious to implement as you need to scriptshell this (dump/restore).
So to be clear, it was technically possible, but not included really as
a out-of-the-package (out of the box) PG feature.

That's only a heard/though of. Maybe there are other ways to do such
a thing?

--
Jean-Christophe

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From:	Marc G. Fournier
Subject:	Re: Technical question for a journalist
Date:	Fri, 7 Jan 2005 13:42:25 -0400 (AST)

On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Francois Suter wrote:

> Hi list,
>
> No need to send out the press release :-), I was alreday grilled half an hour
> by a French journalist about v8. He had apparently read an interview of Marc
> Fournier somewhere.

can you find out *where*? I talked to a journalist yesterday about
something she's writing for next week about something totally unrelated,
and we touched a bit on the upcoming 8.0 ... but other then that, I've
never talked to anyone ... *puzzled look* And that was only yesterday
afternoon ...

----
Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664

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From:	Joshua D. Drake
Subject:	Re: Technical question for a journalist
Date:	Fri, 07 Jan 2005 10:18:46 -0800

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Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Francois Suter wrote:
>
>> Hi list,
>>
>> No need to send out the press release :-), I was alreday grilled half
>> an hour by a French journalist about v8. He had apparently read an
>> interview of Marc Fournier somewhere.
>
>
> can you find out *where*? I talked to a journalist yesterday about
> something she's writing for next week about something totally unrelated,
> and we touched a bit on the upcoming 8.0 ... but other then that, I've
> never talked to anyone ... *puzzled look* And that was only yesterday
> afternoon ...
>

Eweek has your interview marc.

> ----
> Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
> Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
>
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--
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From:	Marc G. Fournier
Subject:	Re: Technical question for a journalist
Date:	Fri, 7 Jan 2005 22:44:21 -0400 (AST)

got a URL for that? I did a search on fournier, and postgresql, and
nothing in 2005 seems to be pop'ng up ... :( But, I've been known to be
blind too ...

On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Joshua D. Drake wrote:

> Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>> On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Francois Suter wrote:
>>
>>> Hi list,
>>>
>>> No need to send out the press release :-), I was alreday grilled half an
>>> hour by a French journalist about v8. He had apparently read an interview
>>> of Marc Fournier somewhere.
>>
>>
>> can you find out *where*? I talked to a journalist yesterday about
>> something she's writing for next week about something totally unrelated,
>> and we touched a bit on the upcoming 8.0 ... but other then that, I've
>> never talked to anyone ... *puzzled look* And that was only yesterday
>> afternoon ...
>>
>
> Eweek has your interview marc.
>
>
>> ----
>> Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
>> Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
>>
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>
>
> --
> Command Prompt, Inc., home of PostgreSQL Replication, and plPHP.
> Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting.
> +1-503-667-4564 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com
> Mammoth PostgreSQL Replicator. Integrated Replication for PostgreSQL
>

----
Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664

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From:	Bruce Momjian
Subject:	Re: Technical question for a journalist
Date:	Fri, 7 Jan 2005 21:48:45 -0500 (EST)

Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>
> got a URL for that? I did a search on fournier, and postgresql, and
> nothing in 2005 seems to be pop'ng up ... :( But, I've been known to be
> blind too ...

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1748970,00.asp

--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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From:	Marc G. Fournier
Subject:	Re: Technical question for a journalist
Date:	Fri, 7 Jan 2005 23:35:58 -0400 (AST)

On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Bruce Momjian wrote:

> Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>>
>> got a URL for that? I did a search on fournier, and postgresql, and
>> nothing in 2005 seems to be pop'ng up ... :( But, I've been known to be
>> blind too ...
>
> http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1748970,00.asp

Yeech ... and the converation she quoted me in wasn't even *about* the
upcoming release, it just tangent'd over to it :( Ah well, the article
wasn't *bad*, just not expected ...

----
Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664

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From:	Bruce Momjian
Subject:	Re: Technical question for a journalist
Date:	Fri, 7 Jan 2005 22:57:42 -0500 (EST)

Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>
> > Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> >>
> >> got a URL for that? I did a search on fournier, and postgresql, and
> >> nothing in 2005 seems to be pop'ng up ... :( But, I've been known to be
> >> blind too ...
> >
> > http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1748970,00.asp
>
> Yeech ... and the converation she quoted me in wasn't even *about* the
> upcoming release, it just tangent'd over to it :( Ah well, the article
> wasn't *bad*, just not expected ...
>

Yea, I am often surprised at the article contents after an interview,
but they usually are OK none the less.

--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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From:	Josh Berkus
Subject:	Re: Technical question for a journalist
Date:	Sat, 8 Jan 2005 13:19:59 -0800

Marc,

> Yeech ... and the converation she quoted me in wasn't even *about* the
> upcoming release, it just tangent'd over to it :( Ah well, the article
> wasn't *bad*, just not expected ...

Lesson #1 when talking to journalists: NOTHING is "off the record." If you
talk about it, it can show up in print.

I try to teach people this all the time, but even I slip up occasionally ....

--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

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