PostgreSQL Still Not Quite There Yet
[Moozik: Arctic Monkeys - Dancing Shoes]
More and more often I hear people sing the praises of PostgreSQL. The last time I had a peek at PostgreSQL was over a year ago and I remember not feeling overly warm and fuzzy about that lack of out of the box replication. While no doubt a decent choice for smaller apps where a single DB server will suffice, when you're working on something a little bigger with multiple DB servers behind a load balancer - replication is *extremely* important.
The other day, on an interesting thread on use.perl.org I mentioned:
...I haven't really kept up with the advances other open source RDBMS have made in the replication arena so perhaps MySQL is not the only game in town nowadays.
And I got an interesting answer.
I don't think any of the other major libre RDBMS come with decent and/or out of the box replication.Hmm, so perhaps I'll give PostgreSQL another 12 months or so and give it another peek to see how they've progressed in the replication arena.Postgres replication is still a 3rd party add on, and it doesn't come with commercial support either, oh and it can be backwards incompatible in undocumented ways between releases.
Also it corrupts itself unless you vacuum the databases and is a resource hog.
Postgresql isn't planning on adding replication -- its not on the development plan. The current options include stable master-master, pitr, and mast-slave replication options, community supported. Commercial support is available through EnterpriseDB or Sun (if running solaris).
I don't understand why it's a big deal that replication is a separate project? Also, I would take that post with a grain of salt, sounds more like FUD than real issues (as the comment above explains).
I think it's great that there is a third party replication project for Postgresql. For the time being though, I think I'd rather go with a mature replication option. One that is a key feature of the db design that doesn't seem like a bolted-on afterthought.
But I do question why replication is not on the development plan for Postgresql. Seems like it would be a killer feature that folks with large systems would be hungry for.