Hello -- I'm the lead programmer of Lyris ListManager, an email list server that run on PostgreSQL, Oracle, and MS/SQL.

About 20% of our client base of 4000 runs on PostgresSQL -- it's very popular with our clients -- much more than Oracle is (about 3%).

Unfortunately we have about a dozen clients who have stability problems with PostgresSQL. This week a major television network cancelled their order with us due to their PostgresSQL stability issues, which is what prompted me to write this email and get involved with the PostgresSQL community. 

It seems that with larger database sizes (500,000 rows and larger) and high stress, the server daemon has a tendency to core. We've also had cases where a single connection doing a million inserts into a table will cause the daemon to core. We've seen problems with both 7.1 and 7.2.x, with built-on-the-machine and with RPMs.  We've also had big stability problems with Solaris 8/Sparc, and don't ship on that platform because of that.

What I'd like to do is help solve these problems in the core distribution, so that PostrgesSQL can indeed be able to handle the large databases and high transaction loads that Microsoft SQL can.

My company has hired open source people before to help fix bugs or add features to open source projects, most notable from the Tcl community, as we use Tcl quite a bit (we have two programmers from the Tcl Core team working here).  This works out well for the Tcl community, as we fund the development of the project, as well as pay someone to work on something they want to work on anyhow.

So... what I'm looking for are recommendations on a PostgresSQL guru who could help nail the stability/load issues, and make sure that the fixes make their way back into the PostgresSQL core.  What I'd prefer is to get a regular contributor to this list, so that this person could investigate our problems, and then get the community's help in solving them.

Thanks!

-john

Fri, 20 Sep 2002 14:18:24 -0700
John Buckman <john@lyris.com>
Lyris looking to help fix PostgresSQL crashing problems
John Buckman <john@lyris.com> writes:
> It seems that with larger database sizes (500,000 rows and larger) and
> high stress, the server daemon has a tendency to core.

We'd love to see some stack traces ...

			regards, tom lane

Fri, 20 Sep 2002 17:59:42 -0400
Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Re: Lyris looking to help fix PostgresSQL crashing problems 