So why we do support postgresql?
Hi, Still there are no testers. I want to reiterate my plea: make postgresql support somewhat optional. If there are testers, great, if not, go on with life. You can flame me, but this is already the state of affairs just noone wants to admit. Just see http://groups.drupal.org/node/6980 . Greg spoonfeeds you. I know we will get testers for the rest of the week because of this letter and then they will move away as it happened uncounted times. I wonder what people will say. "Monoculture is bad" -- tick, do not bother with this answer. "You are evil" -- tick, do not bother either. "There are testers, but" -- surely there are just they have hidden themselves really well. What about answering something constructive? I *am* bored by needing this raised every month. Regards Karoly Negyesi
Agreed, It should be a lot more intersting if Drupal support MSSQL and MYSQL, Oracle would be great too. I know no one who uses postgre!!! Never read anywere a site who did. Feijó ----- Original Message ----- From: "Karoly Negyesi" <karoly@negyesi.net> To: "Drupal development" <development@drupal.org> Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 4:22 PM Subject: [development] So why we do support postgresql?
Hi,
Still there are no testers. I want to reiterate my plea: make postgresql support somewhat optional. If there are testers, great, if not, go on with life. You can flame me, but this is already the state of affairs just noone wants to admit. Just see http://groups.drupal.org/node/6980 . Greg spoonfeeds you. I know we will get testers for the rest of the week because of this letter and then they will move away as it happened uncounted times.
I wonder what people will say. "Monoculture is bad" -- tick, do not bother with this answer. "You are evil" -- tick, do not bother either. "There are testers, but" -- surely there are just they have hidden themselves really well. What about answering something constructive? I *am* bored by needing this raised every month.
Regards
Karoly Negyesi
Hi, I am with Károly on this one. PostgreSQL support is certainly a nice to have feature, but since there is noone seriously using it (NowPublic used PostgreSQL a couple of months ago but eventually switched to MySQL), supporting it is more a hinderance than an actual benefit for Drupal. Fact is that MySQL is by far the most used DBMS used with Drupal. That has two reasons: MySQL is installed on most hosts and most people in the PHP hosting business are familiar with setting up, configuring and tuning MySQL. The second reason is that most contrib modules don't properly support Postgres, and only few people are running a Drupal site without several contrib modules. So, what buys us supporting Postgres in core if you can't actually use it because critical contrib modules don't support it properly? You guessed it. Let's not get into the illusion that module maintainers will eventually add Postgres support; most of them don't even have Postgres installed and I bet most are not willing to learn yet another DBMS' innards to circumnavigate all the cliffs associated with that task. IMO, there are two ways we could go: - Rip out Postgres support (but let's not drop the DBAL; we need it for mysql vs. mysqli and it's not really a speed issue) - Completely abstract access to the database so that module authors don't have to write actual SQL code Konstantin Käfer -- http://kkaefer.com/ ------------------------------------------------------ Don't miss DrupalCON Boston 2008 · March 3-6, 2008 Learn more at http://boston2008.drupalcon.org Affordable sponsorship packages available ------------------------------------------------------ On 15.01.2008, at 19:22, Karoly Negyesi wrote:
Hi,
Still there are no testers. I want to reiterate my plea: make postgresql support somewhat optional. If there are testers, great, if not, go on with life. You can flame me, but this is already the state of affairs just noone wants to admit. Just see http://groups.drupal.org/node/6980 . Greg spoonfeeds you. I know we will get testers for the rest of the week because of this letter and then they will move away as it happened uncounted times.
I wonder what people will say. "Monoculture is bad" -- tick, do not bother with this answer. "You are evil" -- tick, do not bother either. "There are testers, but" -- surely there are just they have hidden themselves really well. What about answering something constructive? I *am* bored by needing this raised every month.
Regards
Karoly Negyesi
"The second reason is that most contrib modules don't properly support Postgres..." Well, I don't know about anyone else's modules, but I try very hard to keep my code compatible with all SQL databases. We could make this same argument about translation. I see many contrib. modules that aren't properly coded for translation, so should we drop translation too? That would make coding simpler. Nancy E. Wichmann, PMP
We could make this same argument about translation. I see many contrib. modules that aren't properly coded for translation, so should we drop translation too? That would make coding simpler.
The majority of contrib modules is translatable. Also, that argument doesn't count as a lot of Drupal users use localized/translated websites. The difference to Postgres support is that people *actively use* that feature. Konstantin Käfer -- http://kkaefer.com/ ------------------------------------------------------ Don't miss DrupalCON Boston 2008 · March 3-6, 2008 Learn more at http://boston2008.drupalcon.org Affordable sponsorship packages available ------------------------------------------------------
noone suggested ripping out postgres. please don't introduce that topic. the only suggestions chx made was that patches be allowed to proceed without deep pgsql testing since those testers are not available. lets stay on that focused topic. On 1/15/08, Konstantin Käfer <kkaefer@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
I am with Károly on this one.
Still there are no testers. I want to reiterate my plea: make postgresql support somewhat optional. If there are testers, great, if not, go on with life. You can flame me, but this is already the state of affairs just noone wants to admit. Just see http://groups.drupal.org/node/6980 . Greg spoonfeeds you. I know we will get testers for the rest of the week because of this letter and then they will move away as it happened uncounted times.
Basically, I have PostGreSQL available on Windows and Linux. So, basically, I was able test patches. However, as a regular Drupal community member and contributor (not yet so much core), I don't know that *there are any* PostGreSQL-related patches that could be tested. Indeed, Greg's overview is nice, but I didn't know that it existed. Now I know, and I hope I can test some of them. Middle-term proposal: Categorization of issues has just been enabled for 'Newbie' and 'GHOP' terms. Why don't we add another vocabulary for global issue categories like 'PostGreSQL', 'Performance', 'JavaScript', etc. ? That way, contributors who like to focus or help out on a certain topic could easily *find* all related issues (and probably subscribe to a feed). If that categorization was also open for contrib modules, overall support for postgres and the like may be increased. Realization of this proposal would include that the category of an issue could be altered in an issue follow-up, and not just at the time of issue creation. Furthermore, we should provide easy access to those categorized issues - the 'contributor links' block jumps into my mind immediately. Daniel
Addition: 'Translation'/'Internationalization' and 'Usability' are probably another two of these "hot topics". smk-ka just pointed out, that we already have a template for this topic list at http://groups.drupal.org (it's called '[interest] group' there ;) If we provide the right tools for interested users, I'm pretty sure they will contribute more.
Middle-term proposal: Categorization of issues has just been enabled for 'Newbie' and 'GHOP' terms. Why don't we add another vocabulary for global issue categories like 'PostGreSQL', 'Performance', 'JavaScript', etc. ? That way, contributors who like to focus or help out on a certain topic could easily *find* all related issues (and probably subscribe to a feed). If that categorization was also open for contrib modules, overall support for postgres and the like may be increased. Realization of this proposal would include that the category of an issue could be altered in an issue follow-up, and not just at the time of issue creation. Furthermore, we should provide easy access to those categorized issues - the 'contributor links' block jumps into my mind immediately.
Daniel
On Jan 15, 2008, at 12:07 PM, Daniel F. Kudwien wrote:
Why don't we add another vocabulary for global issue categories like 'PostGreSQL', 'Performance', 'JavaScript', etc. ?
...
Realization of this proposal would include that the category of an issue could be altered in an issue follow-up, and not just at the time of issue creation.
http://drupal.org/node/187480 -Derek (dww)
I support chx's proposal, don't let PostgreSQL hinder the development cycle. But, every time we have this discussion, we get people talking theories but no concrete data. We here about Drupal must be database agnostic, down with monoculture, ...etc. Which is all good. What we are missing is how many real world websites use Drupal AND PostgreSQL, how big these sites are, how many contributed modules are being used, ...etc. I propose a poll with the following options on it: - MySQL MyISAM - MySQL InnoDB - PostgreSQL - other With comments enabled so we get at least some sampling of what is out there. Some data is better than no data, so let us get it.
If we want to do this we need more options: On Jan 15, 2008 9:13 PM, Khalid Baheyeldin <kb@2bits.com> wrote: > - MySQL MyISAM > - MySQL InnoDB - MySQL - Multiple engines > - PostgreSQL - Both MySQL and PostgreSQL - One ore more of the rest MySQL, PostgreSQL, MSSQL, Oracle, DB2 But to what end? If we find out (what we already know) that PostgreSQL is the tiny minority what do we gain? All that I would really like is for the PostgreSQL people to help with testing. We have a critical issue sitting with a patch for days and very few people are helping (Daniel is awesome for doing this, btw). The page[1] Karoly linked in his thread-starter is a wiki so that anyone can add issues to it. Please, add issues to it and also track how often they actually get a review. To me that is more important than whether or not PostgreSQL is in use in general. [1] http://groups.drupal.org/node/6980 Greg -- Greg Knaddison Denver, CO | http://knaddison.com World Spanish Tour | http://wanderlusting.org/user/greg
On Jan 15, 2008 6:45 PM, Greg Knaddison - GVS < Greg@growingventuresolutions.com> wrote: > If we want to do this we need more options: > > On Jan 15, 2008 9:13 PM, Khalid Baheyeldin <kb@2bits.com> wrote: > > - MySQL MyISAM > > - MySQL InnoDB > - MySQL - Multiple engines > > - PostgreSQL > - Both MySQL and PostgreSQL > - One ore more of the rest MySQL, PostgreSQL, MSSQL, Oracle, DB2 > > But to what end? If we find out (what we already know) that > PostgreSQL is the tiny minority what do we gain? > Quantifies it. Those who want PostgreSQL to continue, either have to put in the effort to test things (from your issue) or cough up the money for it. Complaining about theories and such is not helping. Michelle already pointed to this http://groups.drupal.org/node/6164 which is sufficient. > All that I would really like is for the PostgreSQL people to help with > testing. We have a critical issue sitting with a patch for days and > very few people are helping (Daniel is awesome for doing this, btw). > The page[1] Karoly linked in his thread-starter is a wiki so that > anyone can add issues to it. Please, add issues to it and also track > how often they actually get a review. To me that is more important > than whether or not PostgreSQL is in use in general. > > [1] http://groups.drupal.org/node/6980 > > Greg > > -- > Greg Knaddison > Denver, CO | http://knaddison.com > World Spanish Tour | http://wanderlusting.org/user/greg > -- Khalid M. Baheyeldin 2bits.com, Inc. http://2bits.com Drupal optimization, development, customization and consulting.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Khalid Baheyeldin schrieb: > On Jan 15, 2008 6:45 PM, Greg Knaddison - GVS < > Greg@growingventuresolutions.com> wrote: > >> If we want to do this we need more options: >> >> On Jan 15, 2008 9:13 PM, Khalid Baheyeldin <kb@2bits.com> wrote: >>> - MySQL MyISAM >>> - MySQL InnoDB >> - MySQL - Multiple engines >>> - PostgreSQL >> - Both MySQL and PostgreSQL >> - One ore more of the rest MySQL, PostgreSQL, MSSQL, Oracle, DB2 >> >> But to what end? If we find out (what we already know) that >> PostgreSQL is the tiny minority what do we gain? >> > > Quantifies it. > > Those who want PostgreSQL to continue, either have to put in the effort to > test things (from your issue) or cough up the money for it. This discussion is pretty pointless. Dries has stated multiple times that he wants to increase the number of supported databases. So doing a Drupal release without full pgsql support is out of the question. So, I'd like to revert the idea: People who complain about postgres not been tested and the release being late because of this should set up a postgres DB and test Drupal on it. Can't be that hard. Cheers, Gerhard -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHjUx2fg6TFvELooQRAttJAJ9Gwv+BnVIBNI+MWO4Qwuq5paFFNgCghPbn siTKjaCs53HtuSyq1Uxdy0A= =OmJY -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
This discussion is pretty pointless. Dries has stated multiple times that he wants to increase the number of supported databases. So doing a Drupal release without full pgsql support is out of the question.
And Dries has changed his mind about stuff more than once. He listens and can be convinced.
So, I'd like to revert the idea: People who complain about postgres not been tested and the release being late because of this should set up a postgres DB and test Drupal on it. Can't be that hard.
yeah but what about scratch your own itch? I have no business with postgresql . Regards NK
On Jan 15, 2008 7:23 PM, Karoly Negyesi <karoly@negyesi.net> wrote:
This discussion is pretty pointless. Dries has stated multiple times that he wants to increase the number of supported databases. So doing a Drupal release without full pgsql support is out of the question.
And Dries has changed his mind about stuff more than once. He listens and can be convinced.
It is nice to be idealistic, but it is practical to be realistic. Once can dream about many things, but the means to such dreams tell you what can be achieved. In this case, being database agnostic is the idealistic goal. The lack of manpower for it to happen for one database is obviously limiting that one database. So let us not talk about many more databases until we have the one in question addressed.
So, I'd like to revert the idea: People who complain about postgres not been tested and the release being late because of this should set up a postgres DB and test Drupal on it. Can't be that hard.
yeah but what about scratch your own itch? I have no business with postgresql .
Yes, turning the tables will not work on this one. Those who want it to happen must make it happen. Where are those who have business with PostgreSQL/MSSQL/Oracle/...etc. -- Khalid M. Baheyeldin 2bits.com, Inc. http://2bits.com Drupal optimization, development, customization and consulting.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Karoly Negyesi schrieb:
This discussion is pretty pointless. Dries has stated multiple times that he wants to increase the number of supported databases. So doing a Drupal release without full pgsql support is out of the question.
And Dries has changed his mind about stuff more than once. He listens and can be convinced.
He can, but I doubt he'd change his mind on such a central topic.
So, I'd like to revert the idea: People who complain about postgres not been tested and the release being late because of this should set up a postgres DB and test Drupal on it. Can't be that hard.
yeah but what about scratch your own itch? I have no business with postgresql .
Well, I am interested in seeing a timely D6 release so we can starthacking at D7, so I installed postgres and will see how far I get. Cheers, Gerhard -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHjVVsfg6TFvELooQRAncgAKCajW/gd9c5Uk2aQ3U6SrGPm+n3FwCdG6zS t3HzdLO4PDB7QFp0ohNWpcM= =ABV2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
This discussion is pretty pointless. Dries has stated multiple times that he wants to increase the number of supported databases. So doing a Drupal release without full pgsql support is out of the question.
And Dries has changed his mind about stuff more than once. He listens and can be convinced.
So, I'd like to revert the idea: People who complain about postgres not been tested and the release being late because of this should set up a postgres DB and test Drupal on it. Can't be that hard.
yeah but what about scratch your own itch? I have no business with postgresql . Regards NK
I'm with Killes on this one, somewhat grudgingly, but I came around after the last debate on the topic. I now do all my Drupal development on pgSQL. Then I run code into production on MySQL. Think of it as a development "best practice" on the order of simpletests. Sadly, I've been working on other projects and not core. Also sadly, I started down this path because no one else would test my modules on pgSQL. For us Mac users, the Marc Liyanage package (of course) is simple to configure. http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/postgresql/ - Ken Rickard agentrickard On Jan 15, 2008 7:23 PM, Karoly Negyesi <karoly@negyesi.net> wrote:
This discussion is pretty pointless. Dries has stated multiple times that he wants to increase the number of supported databases. So doing a Drupal release without full pgsql support is out of the question.
And Dries has changed his mind about stuff more than once. He listens and can be convinced.
So, I'd like to revert the idea: People who complain about postgres not been tested and the release being late because of this should set up a postgres DB and test Drupal on it. Can't be that hard.
yeah but what about scratch your own itch? I have no business with postgresql .
Regards
NK
-- -- -------------------------------------------------------------- DON'T MISS EARTH'S LARGEST GATHERING OF DRUPAL PROFESSIONALS! Drupalcon Boston 2008 · March 3-6, 2008 Learn more at http://boston2008.drupalcon.org Affordable sponsorship packages available --------------------------------------------------------------
On Tue, 15 Jan 2008 19:51:21 -0500 "Ken Rickard" <agentrickard@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm with Killes on this one, somewhat grudgingly, but I came around after the last debate on the topic.
I now do all my Drupal development on pgSQL. Then I run code into production on MySQL. Think of it as a development "best practice" on the order of simpletests.
I already do all (very few exceptions indeed) my development on pg but on 5.X. I've installed 6.X on pg too but at this moment I'm not in a position I can build up an environment that fit with drupal dev infrastructure and learn how to interface myself with the dev community so to be able to collaborate more actively to patch stuff. Missing the knowledge to contribute in an effective way and knowing the state of affairs related to pg, that makes hard to apply any banal patch to pg unless you know some Saint http://drupal.org/node/198233 http://drupal.org/node/107824 still not fixed in 6.X beta2 (don't know if it got fixed later) I think I'll get out of the cave no sooner than mid February. -- Ivan Sergio Borgonovo http://www.webthatworks.it
Karoly Negyesi wrote:
So, I'd like to revert the idea: People who complain about postgres not been tested and the release being late because of this should set up a postgres DB and test Drupal on it. Can't be that hard.
yeah but what about scratch your own itch? I have no business with postgresql .
No, but your itch is a timely D6 release, so the suggestion is perfectly valid. No one cares about Aggregator or Poll modules either, but we still don't ship a release unless they're working. :) -Angie
No, but your itch is a timely D6 release, so the suggestion is perfectly valid. No one cares about Aggregator or Poll modules either, but we still don't ship a release unless they're working. :)
-Angie
Well that's true, but it's not as if some of us didn't try to deal with it
a different way either ;) http://drupal.org/node/61285
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I am with killes, too. I have setup testing environment for both MySQL and PostgreSQL, and ready to help (and also contribute some help for) PostgreSQL's patch testing as I can. We have done a lot of great job for D6, e.g. Schema API, drupal_write_record(), etc. We can foresee that the PostgreSQL supporting will become much easier than before, people will not need to have indeed multiple database studying before starting their work. This is a good trend, and I find there is pointless to stop it at this moment. Moreover, I am not only focusing on MySQL and PostgreSQL, but also PHP PDO, Oracle, DB2, MSSQL and so on. I have keep focus on Oracle driver development for more than year, and also start my studying on PostgreSQL for around 3 months. I am now hosting a personal research project called as Siren (http://edin.no-ip.com/project/siren), which try to support as many of databases as possible with minimal change of programming logic (not asking for OOP, not asking for core revamp, etc). According to this research, I found that we have a lot of possibility in supporting more and more databases with no critical pain: Siren is now able to support both mysql/mysqli/pgsql/oci8/pdo_mysql/pdo_pgsql, and I am now researching for pdo_oci and ibm_db2 support. I am also ready to contribute such research progress for D7, whenever it is open for public development. Should we stop PostgreSQL supporting? I don't really think so ;-) Regards, Edison Wong Gerhard Killesreiter wrote: > Khalid Baheyeldin schrieb: > > On Jan 15, 2008 6:45 PM, Greg Knaddison - GVS < > > Greg@growingventuresolutions.com> wrote: > > >> If we want to do this we need more options: > >> > >> On Jan 15, 2008 9:13 PM, Khalid Baheyeldin <kb@2bits.com> wrote: > >>> - MySQL MyISAM > >>> - MySQL InnoDB > >> - MySQL - Multiple engines > >>> - PostgreSQL > >> - Both MySQL and PostgreSQL > >> - One ore more of the rest MySQL, PostgreSQL, MSSQL, Oracle, DB2 > >> > >> But to what end? If we find out (what we already know) that > >> PostgreSQL is the tiny minority what do we gain? > >> > > Quantifies it. > > > Those who want PostgreSQL to continue, either have to put in the > effort to > > test things (from your issue) or cough up the money for it. > > This discussion is pretty pointless. Dries has stated multiple times > that he wants to increase the number of supported databases. So doing a > Drupal release without full pgsql support is out of the question. > > So, I'd like to revert the idea: People who complain about postgres not > been tested and the release being late because of this should set up a > postgres DB and test Drupal on it. Can't be that hard. > > Cheers, > Gerhard -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHjWrUBPIQaq+ZRd8RAkutAJ9THVC/xCfGo7H350yAI4Esiwb55wCeMngK AYA2UhX4qN9xqS4ckCm5gLs= =vecz -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
I have to recall something Jeff Eaton said to me over dinner a few months ago: Drupal supports multiple theme engines. Now, it's not like anyone uses engines other than phptemplate these days. I suspect the percentages for Smarty and Tal are in the same ballpark as those using Postgres. However, making sure that we support multiple engines forces us to make certain design decisions that in the long run are good architecturally. Database abstraction is the same logic. Forcing ourselves to think generically about databases forces us to make certain design decisions that, in the long run, are good for the health of the code, even if only 5 people use something other than MySQL. So the question is, how can we make supporting other databases easier, so that we don't accidentally break things or have patches languish for weeks? - Schema API should help a great deal here. - Hopefully the database work I'm doing in Drupal 7 should help under the hood. - Automated unit testing of core helps a lot of things. If we can run unit tests against both MySQL and Postgres, that would help find bugs earlier. - I like the proposal for flagging issues as "Hey, Postgres people, take a look". That would be much more "up front" and get noticed by more people, which in turn would, hopefully, mean more Postgres people able to test things or offer input. (I didn't know there was a wiki page until earlier today, either.) - Other ideas? Remember, we'd want to do this for every database we support. As for chx's actual proposal, to let patches through if they work on MySQL and Postgres testing is not forthcoming, I'm torn. On the one hand, yes, scratch your itch. On the other, if we start committing patches that don't work in Postgres then we soon don't actually work on Postgres and it's just that much more work later. I'm torn here. I could see accepting patches that work in both but are sub-optimal in Postgres, eg notably slower but still functional. Improving the Postgres performance of that query then becomes a task for someone with an itch, but we still run on all "supported" databases. On Tuesday 15 January 2008, Karoly Negyesi wrote:
Hi,
Still there are no testers. I want to reiterate my plea: make postgresql support somewhat optional. If there are testers, great, if not, go on with life. You can flame me, but this is already the state of affairs just noone wants to admit. Just see http://groups.drupal.org/node/6980 . Greg spoonfeeds you. I know we will get testers for the rest of the week because of this letter and then they will move away as it happened uncounted times.
I wonder what people will say. "Monoculture is bad" -- tick, do not bother with this answer. "You are evil" -- tick, do not bother either. "There are testers, but" -- surely there are just they have hidden themselves really well. What about answering something constructive? I *am* bored by needing this raised every month.
Regards
Karoly Negyesi
-- Larry Garfield AIM: LOLG42 larry@garfieldtech.com ICQ: 6817012 "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it." -- Thomas Jefferson
participants (16)
-
Alessandro Feijó -
Angela Byron -
catch -
Daniel F. Kudwien -
Derek Wright -
Edison Wong -
Gerhard Killesreiter -
Greg Knaddison - GVS -
Ivan Sergio Borgonovo -
Karoly Negyesi -
Ken Rickard -
Khalid Baheyeldin -
Konstantin Käfer -
Larry Garfield -
Moshe Weitzman -
Nancy Wichmann