On The Margins

Saturday May 10, 2008

[ Technology ] DTrace Probes for Databases

Robert Lor has listed potential standard DTrace probes for databases and some PostgreSQL-specific probes.

2008-05-10 04:22:10.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
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Thursday May 08, 2008

[ Sun Microsystems Inc. ] Who Dons the Java DB T-Shirt

Giuseppe Maxia took this picture at JavaOne, 2008, just a couple of days ago. It shows Marten Mickos (MySQL) donning the Java DB T-Shirt and giving a friendly hug to PostgreSQL evangelist Josh Berkus. That's how the story of the three open-source databases from Sun will keep unfolding. Many observers have noted that customers and developers will have great choices to work with: the premier open-source DB for web applications, the premier open-source DB for demanding enterprise and reporting applications, and the premier open-source DB for embedding in Java applications. All from the same company. Sun!

2008-05-08 23:41:34.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
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Monday May 05, 2008

[ Technology ] PG on Mac

The PostgreSQL 7.3 installation instructions for Mac OS-X also work well for installing PostreSQL 8.3. The changes you need to make to these instructions should be obvious. On Tiger, building PostgreSQL from source will require XCode 2.5 Developer Tools from Apple, which is a free download for members of ADC.

(By the way, if you're using PostgreSQL on Solaris and need support, you can purchase it directly from Sun.)

2008-05-05 00:39:46.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
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Friday April 25, 2008

[ Technology ] Tolven Health PostgreSQL Benchmark

Tolven Health has published a benchmarking study with PostgreSQL on Solaris. The purpose of the study was to "to assess the scalability and performance characteristics of the Tolven open source healthcare information technology solution and to provide guidance for customers with regards to hardware requirements for enterprise, state, regional, and country wide deployments."

2008-04-25 16:38:35.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
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Thursday February 07, 2008

[ Sun Microsystems Inc. ] Three Open Source Databases in Solaris SXDE 1/08

These three open-source databases, now in OpenSolaris SXDE 1/08, offer all the needed features for most of the applications out there.

"Three databases to run them all"...

... and of course, Sun offers solutions with commercial database vendors, like the Sun and Oracle's Enterprise Grid Solutions.

2008-02-07 22:39:32.0 -- Comments [4] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
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[ Sun Microsystems Inc. ] SXDE 1/08 is Released!

Sun Microsystems has released Solaris Express Developer Edition 1/08, Sun's free OpenSolaris-based distribution targeted at developers.

This release brings together integrated web stack (Apache, MySQL, Ruby, Php, PostgreSQL), NetBeans 6.0, interoperability with Microsoft's CIFS protocol, support for virtual machines via Sun xVM hypervisor, based on  technology developed by the Xen community, Sun HPC ClusterTools based on the Open MPI effort.

There are three ways to acquire Solaris Express Developer Edition 1/08: (1) Free download; (2) Have a free DVD mailed to you (at no cost); (3) Download a VMware SXDE 1/08 virtual machine.

2008-02-07 21:33:40.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
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Tuesday February 05, 2008

[ Technology ] PostgreSQL 8.3 is Released

Josh Berkus has just announced the release of PostgreSQL 8.3. Bjorn Munch has posted a note on the release of the Solaris binaries for PostgreSQL 8.3 on the OpenSolaris database community discussion forum. Munch also has a wiki entry that describes how to build PostgreSQL for youself. (Important note: As should be expected, Sun provides support only for PostgreSQL versions that it itself ships with Solaris. While this should be kept in mind, we also like developers to know how to build and develop PostgreSQL on Solaris. Hence the wiki entry!) This, I believe, is the first time official Solaris binaries of a GA release of PostgreSQL become available also through PostgreSQL.org. About this release, there has been a lot of commentary in the press and in blogsphere. These were forwarded by a colleague. I selected some of the news and blog items below, giving the relevant links:

• PostreSQL 8.3 ups performance, XML support -- Computerworld AU, 2/5

• PostgreSQL 8.3: UUID, XML, ENUMs… -- Orangeis My Favorite Color, 2/4

• PostgreSQL 8.3 Released -- AjaxLine (also appeared on Massimiliano Dessì's blog), 2/4

• PostgreSQL 8.3 Released -- UNIX System Administration, 2/4

• Postgresql 8.3 released -- Profoss News, 2/4

If interested, you should also consult the official PostgreSQL 8.3 release announcement.

Finally, I would also recommend checking out Sun PostgreSQL web site and the OpenSolaris database community for discussion and other topics related to PostgreSQL and databases in general!

Addenda:

"Open Source PostgreSQL 8.3 Better Suited For Web Applications: New features include a full text search tool, improved overall throughput, and ANSI standard SQL/XML support ," InformationWeek, 2/7

2008-02-05 18:13:20.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
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Wednesday January 30, 2008

[ Technology ] Buying PostgreSQL support got easier

Buying support for PostgreSQL on Solaris has become much easier.

Just click "Buy Now" on the PostgreSQL support page and you'll be on your way.

2008-01-30 17:59:51.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
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Wednesday November 21, 2007

[ Technology ] Blogging from Berkeley

Blogging from Berkeley, David Van Couvering, a database technologist at Sun Microsystems, has recently written some pieces examining PostgreSQL on Solaris. (I certainly look forward to even more such pieces, or maybe some pieces on migration from Oracle or MySQL. I think there are some interesting topics to explore in those areas when it comes to tooling.)

For example, take a look at his posts on "NetBeans, Ruby on Rails, and PostgreSQL on Solaris"and on "Starting PostgreSQL as a service in Solaris Express ."
 

2007-11-21 12:43:20.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
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Tuesday October 02, 2007

[ Sun Microsystems Inc. ] PostgreSQL @ Sun

With revamped product web pages, you can more readily find information about PostgreSQL on Solaris, and if you're already a user of PostgreSQL on Solaris, you can buy PostgreSQL support from Sun.

2007-10-02 08:31:42.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
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Thursday August 02, 2007

[ Technology ] Underground Notes and Voices from OSCon and Ubuntu Live

Some say Sun is as cool as OSCon (if not cooler) because, among most companies that support OSCon, only Sun can produce truly underground notes on OSCon.

David Van Couvering reviews Mike Olson's comments about his keynote at OSCon and pontificates about whether the value of Open Source could be limited to the collaboration it fosters. David aptly notes that

Open source and an open community gives you the assurance that the technology you are depending on is not going to be discontinued or put into "maintenance mode," it won't be acquired by someone who you would rather not do business with, and it won't be used as leverage against you to extract money or modify your behavior.

By way of further review, David contrasts MySQL as an Open Source project to PostgreSQL as an Open Source project.

In a separate underground note from OSCon, Barton George has posted his interview with Free Software Foundation lawyer Eben Moglen.

Barton has also produced a series of interviews with some six dignitaries during Ubuntu Live: Mark Shuttleworth. Tim Gardner, Jane Silber, Daniel Holbach, Stephen O'Grady, Jono Bacon.

2007-08-02 10:42:13.0 -- Comments [1] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
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Tuesday July 10, 2007

[ Technology ] Database Price-Performance on Sun All Open-Source Platform

More good PostgreSQL and open-source news! 

In the first week of July 2007, Sun announced a very attractive SpecJ2004 result for an all open-source Sun stack, including PostgreSQL on Solaris on Niagara.

Josh Berkus and Jignesh Shah have already written about the recent SpecJ benchmark results. 

The highlights are already given by Josh and Jignesh's blogs: Josh notes the importance of the results in proving the suitability of the Niagara architecture for DB applications and the importance of this result as a proof of SMP scalability. He also notes the significant price difference between Sun and the competition and looks forward to even better SMP performance by PostgreSQL database on Solaris. Jignesh gives some details regarding the DB tuning strategy used. If you want more of the tuning strategy details, you should probably leave him a comment.

Here's a summary of other highlights based on other sources:

• This is the second all open source SPECjAppServer2004 benchmark result and Sun is the only vendor to publish all open source results.
• It demonstrates Sun's commitment to use open source software at all levels of the stack -- including open source databases -- and to bring these price/performance benefits to users.
• An all-Sun, all open source stack comprised of PostgreSQL on Solaris (built off OpenSolaris) on T2000s (with OpenSPARC) with Glassfish gave 89% the performance at 34% the cost of a comparable HP benchmark with proprietary database, application server, and hardware. (Tom Daly provides further details regarding price-performance results.)
  

If you do not know about SpecJ 2004, refer to spec.org. In summary, SPECjAppServer2004 heavily exercises all parts of the underlying infrastructure that make up the application environment, including hardware, JVM software, database software, JDBC drivers, and the system network. The primary metric of the SPECjAppServer2004 benchmark is jAppServer Operations Per Second ("SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS") in either @Standard or @Distributed mode.

Look, also, at Tom Daly's blog for more information on these performance benchmarks and more.

Disclosure Statement:
Sun Fire X4200 (6 chips, 12 cores) 778.14 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard.
HP rx2660 (2 chips, 4 cores) 874.61 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard.
SPEC, SPECjAppServer reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation.
Results from www.spec.org as of 7/10/07.

2007-07-10 00:12:06.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
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Tuesday June 26, 2007

[ Technology ] PostgreSQL Scaling

Jignesh Shah writes about PostgreSQL 8.2.4 Scaling on Sun Fire T2000 with Solaris 10 11/06. 

2007-06-26 20:46:45.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
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