FYI:

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif., Jan. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Inprise Corporation
  (Nasdaq: INPR) today announced that it is jumping to the forefront of
  the Linux database market by open-sourcing the beta version of
  InterBase 6, the new version of its SQL database. InterBase will be
  released in open-source form for multiple platforms, including Linux,
  Windows NT, and Solaris. 

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle
  maillist@candle.pha.pa.us            |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Mon, 3 Jan 2000 16:01:24 -0500 (EST)
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Open source
Bruce Momjian wrote:
>   InterBase 6, the new version of its SQL database. InterBase will be
>   released in open-source form for multiple platforms, including Linux,

I wonder just how 'open' it will be, license-wise.....

Nice thing about PostgreSQL -- it doesn't get any more open than the BSD
license.

--
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11

Mon, 03 Jan 2000 16:14:22 -0500
Lamar Owen <lamar.owen@wgcr.org>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Open source
Bruce Momjian wrote:
> 
> FYI:
> 
> SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif., Jan. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Inprise Corporation
>   (Nasdaq: INPR) today announced that it is jumping to the forefront of
>   the Linux database market by open-sourcing the beta version of
>   InterBase 6, the new version of its SQL database. InterBase will be
>   released in open-source form for multiple platforms, including Linux,
>   Windows NT, and Solaris.
>

Seems we are starting to get some serious competition ;)
AFAIK, they cover more or less the same features (except domains which 
we don't have)

BTW, it also says:

The source code for InterBase 6 is scheduled to be published during 
the first part of the year 2000.

Chould this "part" be 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/12 (or 1/1) ?

------------
Hannu

Tue, 04 Jan 2000 00:56:46 +0200
Hannu Krosing <hannu@tm.ee>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Open source
I wish this announcement had been made a few months ago!! We have several
developers porting our server software to PostgreSQL.  Although we like
PostgreSQL, we have run into a number of memory leaks and bugs - something
we never encountered with Interbase.

Now Interbase is going open source, we will discontinue the PostgreSQL
development effort.  Interbase is such a well written DBMS, it doesn't make
sense to continue.

You guys have done a great job - but, frankly, IB is better.

Steve


Bruce Momjian wrote:

> FYI:
>
> SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif., Jan. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Inprise Corporation
>   (Nasdaq: INPR) today announced that it is jumping to the forefront of
>   the Linux database market by open-sourcing the beta version of
>   InterBase 6, the new version of its SQL database. InterBase will be
>   released in open-source form for multiple platforms, including Linux,
>   Windows NT, and Solaris.
>
> --
>   Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle
>   maillist@candle.pha.pa.us            |  (610) 853-3000
>   +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
>   +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026
>
> ************


Mon, 03 Jan 2000 17:25:21 -0800
Stephen Birch <sbirch@ironmountainsystems.com>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Open source
On Mon, 3 Jan 2000, Stephen Birch wrote:

> I wish this announcement had been made a few months ago!! We have
> several developers porting our server software to PostgreSQL.  
> Although we like PostgreSQL, we have run into a number of memory leaks
> and bugs - something we never encountered with Interbase.

What version of PostgreSQL?  Did the problem reports you sent in not
improve the situation?

> Now Interbase is going open source, we will discontinue the PostgreSQL
> development effort.  Interbase is such a well written DBMS, it doesn't
> make sense to continue.

Two points...when will Interbase go open source?  Right now they've
announced the intention to do so, and even given a very brood time
frame...but, when is it going to happen.  two...what says Interbase will
continue to be "as good" when becomes open source and they are no longer
making any money on it?

> You guys have done a great job - but, frankly, IB is better.

In what ways?  

Marc G. Fournier                   ICQ#7615664               IRC Nick: Scrappy
Systems Administrator @ hub.org 
primary: scrappy@hub.org           secondary: scrappy@{freebsd|postgresql}.org 


Mon, 3 Jan 2000 22:39:41 -0400 (AST)
The Hermit Hacker <scrappy@hub.org>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Open source
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Mon, 3 Jan 2000, Stephen Birch wrote:

> You guys have done a great job - but, frankly, IB is better.
> 
> Steve

wtf ? what sort of lame remark/incentive is that ? gimme a break being
amongst the multitudes who use pg dayin/dayout i hate tirekickers that say
rubbish like 'such and such is better' or 'if you do such and such' having
been down this path many times over the years myself, the last thing the
engineers working on pg need is to hear those sort of negative comments.

just my $0.02c knowing how hard everyone works on pg and it is superb!

/Torqumada

Norman Widders  -    Paladin Corporation Pty Ltd. ACN: 081-191-611
The  lyf  so  short,  the  craft  so  long  to  lerne  -   Chaucer
NIC: NW83-AU                OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris, SCO, Debian
Software Engineering:         c/c++/perl/sql/eiffel/pascal/haskell
Ph: +612 9835-4782     Fax: +612 9864-0487    Mobile: 0416-207-857
Powered by Symetric Multiple Processors running on FreeBSD 3.4/SMP
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.0 (FreeBSD)
Comment: Made with pgp4pine

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VtwAoIfdLqeqEw2JEVZXW4tyPnp3rsLn
=BzpQ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


Tue, 4 Jan 2000 19:29:57 +1100 (EST)
Norman Widders <winspace@paladincorp.com.au>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Open source
Stephen Birch wrote:
> 
> I wish this announcement had been made a few months ago!! We have several
> developers porting our server software to PostgreSQL.  Although we like
> PostgreSQL, we have run into a number of memory leaks and bugs - something
> we never encountered with Interbase.
> 
> Now Interbase is going open source, we will discontinue the PostgreSQL
> development effort.  Interbase is such a well written DBMS, it doesn't make
> sense to continue.

The announcement said that IB version 6 _beta_ is going to be open source,
without specifying what kind of license it will have. 

It could very well be something like SCL (i.e. you can have the source, but 
what you can do with it is quite limited). If you just need a
beer-kind-of-free 
database, you may be better off with using Sybase or IB v.4

I suspect that the move to open-source it is at least partly an effort to 
fix "a number of memory leaks and bugs" ;)


------------
Hannu

Tue, 04 Jan 2000 10:41:49 +0200
Hannu Krosing <hannu@tm.ee>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Open source

Stephen Birch <sbirch@ironmountainsystems.com> wrote: 

> Now Interbase is going open source, we will discontinue the PostgreSQL
> development effort.  Interbase is such a well written DBMS, it doesn't make
> sense to continue.

You might want to wait to see what they mean by "open
source".  They might mean GPL, BSD, MPL or they could be
rolling their own vanity license that'll take months to
debug.  They also might go the bogus "open source" route,
ala Sun's "Community Source License".  

Open source projects are a tricky business... if they don't
do it right, they won't attract the critical mass of
developers they need to keep the project going (yes, old
code never dies, but it does bitrot away...). 




Tue, 04 Jan 2000 01:11:09 -0800
Joe Brenner <doom@kzsu.stanford.edu>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Open source 
Stephen Birch wrote:
> 
> I wish this announcement had been made a few months ago!! We have several
> developers porting our server software to PostgreSQL.  Although we like
> PostgreSQL, we have run into a number of memory leaks and bugs - something
> we never encountered with Interbase.
> 
> Now Interbase is going open source, we will discontinue the PostgreSQL
> development effort.  Interbase is such a well written DBMS, it doesn't make
> sense to continue.
> 
> You guys have done a great job - but, frankly, IB is better.

Just been porting our app to Oracle. It took me 3 days to install, and an
extreme amount of frustration ie. jre1.1.6 is hardwired in so you have to
have it to install, oci apps core when dynamically linked, column size
(linesize) set to greater than 125 causes a core when describing an 
object in sqlplus,...

Will look at IB when it comes around, but right now give me Postgres anyday!
--------
Regards
Theo

Tue, 04 Jan 2000 11:11:13 +0200
Theo Kramer <theo@flame.co.za>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Open source
The Hermit Hacker wrote:

> On Mon, 3 Jan 2000, Stephen Birch wrote:
>
> > I wish this announcement had been made a few months ago!! We have
> > several developers porting our server software to PostgreSQL.
> > Although we like PostgreSQL, we have run into a number of memory leaks
> > and bugs - something we never encountered with Interbase.
>
> What version of PostgreSQL?  Did the problem reports you sent in not
> improve the situation?

     I haven't seen that many. And what kind of a project leader must it be,
     that a simple announcement causes the work of several programmers over
     months (sounds at least like a man-year) to be thrown away? IMHO the
     kind of PL, companies like M$ are targeting with their huge amount of
     announcements.


> > Now Interbase is going open source, we will discontinue the PostgreSQL
> > development effort.  Interbase is such a well written DBMS, it doesn't
> > make sense to continue.
>
> Two points...when will Interbase go open source?  Right now they've
> announced the intention to do so, and even given a very brood time
> frame...but, when is it going to happen.  two...what says Interbase will
> continue to be "as good" when becomes open source and they are no longer
> making any money on it?

     Since it's the toplevel story on www.borland.com, I think it'll really
     happen soon. And I also think they intend to continue making money on
     it, just not by selling DB-licenses any more. They have a rich set of
     development tools etc. they can sell anyway. And in many projects I've
     seen that it's never a bad choice not to mixup too many
     hardware/software vendors (they'll all point to each other as soon as
     problems arise). So it's a big PRO for their applications and tools, if
     you'll get the DB they use for free. And it's your decision to spend
     money when going into production to buy commercial support (what I
     expect they'll offer).

     Another point is this. As long as I know Postgres, a couple of features
     had been added just because some user needed it. And they are supported
     and kept alive. Do they have some proposal on that? How will they deal
     with some feature-patch sent in?


Jan

--

#======================================================================#
# It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
# Let's break this rule - forgive me.                                  #
#========================================= wieck@debis.com (Jan Wieck) #




Tue, 04 Jan 2000 13:25:49 +0100
Jan Wieck <jwieck@debis.com>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Open source

I've since gotten an email from Stephen in response to his comments, and I
think that when he wrote his original, he needed his morning cup of coffee
(or equivalent), since it came over alot heavier then what he email'd
me...

A quick summary:

	They didn't report the memory leaks...they fixed them and uploaded
patches, which have been accepted and commit'd

	A few problems couldn't be reproduced, and, therefore, left 
unreported.  I wish ppl would report anyway, as someone else might be
coming across this, finding it also non-reproducable and might have some
data to add :(

	The only one that is left outstanding right now has to do with:

"However, the biggest problem was reported recently, see "HEAP_MOVED_IN during
vacuum" posted on Saturday, no replies" ... 

	Anyone have any comments on that last one?

On Tue, 4 Jan 2000, Jan Wieck wrote:

> The Hermit Hacker wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 3 Jan 2000, Stephen Birch wrote:
> >
> > > I wish this announcement had been made a few months ago!! We have
> > > several developers porting our server software to PostgreSQL.
> > > Although we like PostgreSQL, we have run into a number of memory leaks
> > > and bugs - something we never encountered with Interbase.
> >
> > What version of PostgreSQL?  Did the problem reports you sent in not
> > improve the situation?
> 
>      I haven't seen that many. And what kind of a project leader must it be,
>      that a simple announcement causes the work of several programmers over
>      months (sounds at least like a man-year) to be thrown away? IMHO the
>      kind of PL, companies like M$ are targeting with their huge amount of
>      announcements.
> 
> 
> > > Now Interbase is going open source, we will discontinue the PostgreSQL
> > > development effort.  Interbase is such a well written DBMS, it doesn't
> > > make sense to continue.
> >
> > Two points...when will Interbase go open source?  Right now they've
> > announced the intention to do so, and even given a very brood time
> > frame...but, when is it going to happen.  two...what says Interbase will
> > continue to be "as good" when becomes open source and they are no longer
> > making any money on it?
> 
>      Since it's the toplevel story on www.borland.com, I think it'll really
>      happen soon. And I also think they intend to continue making money on
>      it, just not by selling DB-licenses any more. They have a rich set of
>      development tools etc. they can sell anyway. And in many projects I've
>      seen that it's never a bad choice not to mixup too many
>      hardware/software vendors (they'll all point to each other as soon as
>      problems arise). So it's a big PRO for their applications and tools, if
>      you'll get the DB they use for free. And it's your decision to spend
>      money when going into production to buy commercial support (what I
>      expect they'll offer).
> 
>      Another point is this. As long as I know Postgres, a couple of features
>      had been added just because some user needed it. And they are supported
>      and kept alive. Do they have some proposal on that? How will they deal
>      with some feature-patch sent in?
> 
> 
> Jan
> 
> --
> 
> #======================================================================#
> # It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
> # Let's break this rule - forgive me.                                  #
> #========================================= wieck@debis.com (Jan Wieck) #
> 
> 
> 

Marc G. Fournier                   ICQ#7615664               IRC Nick: Scrappy
Systems Administrator @ hub.org 
primary: scrappy@hub.org           secondary: scrappy@{freebsd|postgresql}.org 


Tue, 4 Jan 2000 09:18:49 -0400 (AST)
The Hermit Hacker <scrappy@hub.org>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Open source
On Tue, 4 Jan 2000, Don Baccus wrote:

> At 10:39 PM 1/3/00 -0400, The Hermit Hacker wrote:
> >On Mon, 3 Jan 2000, Stephen Birch wrote:
> 
> (HH):
> >Two points...when will Interbase go open source?  Right now they've
> >announced the intention to do so, and even given a very brood time
> >frame...but, when is it going to happen.  two...what says Interbase will
> >continue to be "as good" when becomes open source and they are no longer
> >making any money on it?
> 
> They say they'll continue to sell it via their traditional channels
> and sell support, too.   So it's not really clear what open-source
> means in this context.  Open-source doesn't have to mean the disappearance
> of license fees...
> 
> >> You guys have done a great job - but, frankly, IB is better.
> >
> >In what ways?  
> 
> Outer joins, for one. 

currently being worked on by Thomas, schedualed for, I believe, v7.1 this
summer ...

Next? :)



Tue, 4 Jan 2000 10:25:09 -0400 (AST)
The Hermit Hacker <scrappy@hub.org>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Open  source
Don Baccus wrote:

> At 10:39 PM 1/3/00 -0400, The Hermit Hacker wrote:
> >On Mon, 3 Jan 2000, Stephen Birch wrote:
>
> (HH):
> >Two points...when will Interbase go open source?  Right now they've
> >announced the intention to do so, and even given a very brood time
> >frame...but, when is it going to happen.  two...what says Interbase will
> >continue to be "as good" when becomes open source and they are no longer
> >making any money on it?
>
> They say they'll continue to sell it via their traditional channels
> and sell support, too.

They say:
"The source code for InterBase 6 is scheduled to be published during the first
part of the year 2000.
The company also announced it plans to continue to sell and support InterBase
5.6 through normal distribution channels..."

If I understand seems they refer to previous version i.e. InterBase ver. 5.6
but version 6 will be open source,  maybe...


> So it's not really clear what open-source
> means in this context.  Open-source doesn't have to mean the disappearance
> of license fees...
>
> >> You guys have done a great job - but, frankly, IB is better.
> >
> >In what ways?
>
> Outer joins, for one.
>
> - Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza@pacifier.com>
>   Nature photos, on-line guides, Pacific Northwest
>   Rare Bird Alert Service and other goodies at
>   http://donb.photo.net.
>
> ************


Tue, 04 Jan 2000 16:29:09 +0100
Jose Soares <jose@sferacarta.com>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Opensource
The Hermit Hacker <scrappy@hub.org> writes:
> "However, the biggest problem was reported recently, see "HEAP_MOVED_IN
> during vacuum" posted on Saturday, no replies" ... 

> 	Anyone have any comments on that last one?

I replied to it --- not with any useful ideas I'm afraid, just asking
for more info.  But if Stephen is claiming he was ignored, then he's
not reading his email...

			regards, tom lane

Tue, 04 Jan 2000 10:58:33 -0500
Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Open source 
At 10:39 PM 1/3/00 -0400, The Hermit Hacker wrote:
>On Mon, 3 Jan 2000, Stephen Birch wrote:

(HH):
>Two points...when will Interbase go open source?  Right now they've
>announced the intention to do so, and even given a very brood time
>frame...but, when is it going to happen.  two...what says Interbase will
>continue to be "as good" when becomes open source and they are no longer
>making any money on it?

They say they'll continue to sell it via their traditional channels
and sell support, too.   So it's not really clear what open-source
means in this context.  Open-source doesn't have to mean the disappearance
of license fees...

>> You guys have done a great job - but, frankly, IB is better.
>
>In what ways?  

Outer joins, for one. 



- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza@pacifier.com>
  Nature photos, on-line guides, Pacific Northwest
  Rare Bird Alert Service and other goodies at
  http://donb.photo.net.

Tue, 04 Jan 2000 09:19:03 -0800
Don Baccus <dhogaza@pacifier.com>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Open
  source
Don Baccus wrote:


>
>
> So they'll sell 5.6 but maybe 6 will be free?  Strange.  Rumor on Slashdot
> is that they've lost their key developers (a month or so ago).

     If THAT's the case, man, then they try to get back experienced
     programmers for development and support for free via the internet. Then
     it would take some time until they're able to offer professional
     support.

>
>
> And (in response to Jan), yeah, I know outer joins are scheduled
> to be completed in 7.1.  Personally, the interbase news leaves me
> yawning.  Postgres, since 6.5, is meeting my needs just fine.

     Was Marc IIRC. Anyway, most of our proposed features appear in time or
     with a 25-50% overrun. What's absolutely strong for free+open software.
     And moreover, almost every serious bug, that is fixable without
     destroying anything else, get's fixed in a couple of days or weeks. The
     reason for the latter is, that we have a fistfull of programmes who
     work for years now on the code. Some of us since the release from
     Berkeley. That are key developers, who know intuitively into what
     region of the code to dive if some strange misbehaviour is reported.

     So if Inprise really lost them, they have a severe problem.

Jan

--

#======================================================================#
# It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
# Let's break this rule - forgive me.                                  #
#========================================= wieck@debis.com (Jan Wieck) #




Tue, 04 Jan 2000 20:07:11 +0100
Jan Wieck <wieck@debis.com>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Opensource
> > They say they'll continue to sell it via their traditional channels
> > and sell support, too.   So it's not really clear what open-source
> > means in this context.  Open-source doesn't have to mean the disappearance
> > of license fees...
> > 
> > >> You guys have done a great job - but, frankly, IB is better.
> > >
> > >In what ways?  
> > 
> > Outer joins, for one. 
> 
> currently being worked on by Thomas, schedualed for, I believe, v7.1 this
> summer ...

I have spoken to him about getting some minimal OUTER join functionality
in 7.0.  Let's see what happens.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle
  maillist@candle.pha.pa.us            |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Tue, 4 Jan 2000 14:42:19 -0500 (EST)
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Open  source
>      Was Marc IIRC. Anyway, most of our proposed features appear in time or
>      with a 25-50% overrun. What's absolutely strong for free+open software.
>      And moreover, almost every serious bug, that is fixable without
>      destroying anything else, get's fixed in a couple of days or weeks. The
>      reason for the latter is, that we have a fistfull of programmes who
>      work for years now on the code. Some of us since the release from
>      Berkeley. That are key developers, who know intuitively into what
>      region of the code to dive if some strange misbehaviour is reported.
> 
>      So if Inprise really lost them, they have a severe problem.

Another _big_ issue is how clean the code is.  MySQL, for example,
probably loses tons of people because their code is so poorly designed,
and just plain ugly to me.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle
  maillist@candle.pha.pa.us            |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Tue, 4 Jan 2000 14:50:04 -0500 (EST)
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Opensource
At 04:29 PM 1/4/00 +0100, Jose Soares wrote:
>Don Baccus wrote:

>> They say they'll continue to sell it via their traditional channels
>> and sell support, too.
>
>They say:
>"The source code for InterBase 6 is scheduled to be published during the
first
>part of the year 2000.
>The company also announced it plans to continue to sell and support InterBase
>5.6 through normal distribution channels..."
>
>If I understand seems they refer to previous version i.e. InterBase ver. 5.6
>but version 6 will be open source,  maybe...

So they'll sell 5.6 but maybe 6 will be free?  Strange.  Rumor on Slashdot
is that they've lost their key developers (a month or so ago).

And (in response to Jan), yeah, I know outer joins are scheduled
to be completed in 7.1.  Personally, the interbase news leaves me
yawning.  Postgres, since 6.5, is meeting my needs just fine.

BTW, it appears that they have "multi-generational" concurrency
control, which sounds very much like MVCC.  Indeed, the white
paper describing it makes it sound as though the basic strategy
for storing tuples with transaction ids (the "generations") is
kinda similar to PostgreSQL.  They support dirty reads and some
ways to specify which "generation" to read from.  Might be some
ideas there worth looking at for future PostgreSQL work...

Keep in mind that I spent no more than 15 minutes trucking around
their site and docs so I picked up no more than a very, very 
surface impression of stuff. (in other words, my quick impressions
may be very innaccurate).




- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza@pacifier.com>
  Nature photos, on-line guides, Pacific Northwest
  Rare Bird Alert Service and other goodies at
  http://donb.photo.net.

Tue, 04 Jan 2000 12:21:31 -0800
Don Baccus <dhogaza@pacifier.com>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Opensource
> At 02:50 PM 1/4/00 -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> 
> >Another _big_ issue is how clean the code is.  MySQL, for example,
> >probably loses tons of people because their code is so poorly designed,
> >and just plain ugly to me.
> 
> I'll have to say that the Postgres code's quite easy to follow, at
> least at the "grasp-the-big-picture" level at which I've been reading
> it on a casual, off-and-on basis.  Understanding it well enough to
> contribute - well, that's another issue 'cause by its nature it is
> a fairly complex beast!  

Totally true.  Education is very important, and clean coding helps with
that. 

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle
  maillist@candle.pha.pa.us            |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Tue, 4 Jan 2000 16:49:21 -0500 (EST)
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Opensource
Jan Wieck wrote:

>      I haven't seen that many. And what kind of a project leader must it be,
>      that a simple announcement causes the work of several programmers over
>      months (sounds at least like a man-year) to be thrown away? IMHO the
>      kind of PL, companies like M$ are targeting with their huge amount of
>      announcements.
>

Ouch - that hurt.

Let me address the kind of project manager we are talking about here by looking
back at the decision to move from MS to Linux:

In fact, the move to Linux meant throwing away about 10  man years worth of
work on WIN32.  However, the cost savings to my employer were substantial as
customer support issues disappeared overnight once the port was done.  However,
the 10 MY were not discarded over a single announcement, we watched Linux and
experimented with it for about 3 years before starting the port.

To see why we would abort development on a PostgreSQL port of our servers
because of the IB announcement, you must understand why we financed the port to
PG in the first place.  When GNU changed the C run time library to 2.1 (again),
it broke our IB 4.0 based software and prevented us from moving forward to the
current SuSE 6.2 (at the time) release.  We knew the IB problem could be fixed
in an hour or two by recompiling the IB code - but we did not have the source
and Borland considered 4.0 dead.

In itself, this problem did not justify authorizing the PG development - but we
felt it was indicative of future problems with IB.  Hence we started to
research PG to see if it was a suitable replacement.  Investing in PG made me
damn nervous because I failed to locate example sites trusting it with mission
critical work.  In fact, I was convinced by reading the discussion groups and
noting the extremely high caliber of people working on PG and also the
incredible integrity these guys have.  Evenb though they don't make a dime from
PostgreSQL, they really, really care about the software and its users.

We now have PG based servers under test in the lab and are still solving PG
issues before releasing alpha code.  Of course, the IB announcement forces us
to rethink the issue.

As for me being influenced by marketing literature, especially from MS - you
are way off mark.

By the way, I was the idiot that specified NT to our customer base in the first
place - I consider that to be the single worst decision of my successful 20
year computing career.

One final point, I live in a 100% commercial world.  In the capacity of my
work, I am not concerned about the free software ethos, nor do I care if
software is free or not (as in beer) - I just need to deploy solutions that
work.

Steve


{{{{{{{{ {{{{{ 1 hour of real time passed here }}}}}}}}}

Since writing the above, I was called to attend a telecon with my manager and
the ITS managers from our two biggest customers to discuss exactly this issue.
The decision has been made to deploy the PostgreSQL based server.  We all
agreed that whatever happens to Interbase, the personal commitment by the
PostgreSQL folks is not likely to dry up.  Hence the code will continue to
improve over time.  I believe that they clearly understand how important
reliability is to a database server.

There is a good chance that the Borland decision will have a benificial ripple
effect on PG as other engineers turn their attention to Open Source
alternatives.

Wish us luck, we will load the new software on our customers' servers for a FOT
(field operational test) next week.

Steve




Tue, 04 Jan 2000 14:53:06 -0800
Stephen Birch <sbirch@ironmountainsystems.com>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Open source
On Tue, 4 Jan 2000, Stephen Birch wrote:

> By the way, I was the idiot that specified NT to our customer base in
> the first place - I consider that to be the single worst decision of
> my successful 20 year computing career.

Ouch, that must have hurt :(

> Since writing the above, I was called to attend a telecon with my
> manager and the ITS managers from our two biggest customers to discuss
> exactly this issue. The decision has been made to deploy the
> PostgreSQL based server.  We all agreed that whatever happens to
> Interbase, the personal commitment by the PostgreSQL folks is not
> likely to dry up.  Hence the code will continue to improve over time.  
> I believe that they clearly understand how important reliability is to
> a database server.
> 
> There is a good chance that the Borland decision will have a
> benificial ripple effect on PG as other engineers turn their attention
> to Open Source alternatives.
> 
> Wish us luck, we will load the new software on our customers' servers
> for a FOT (field operational test) next week.

Good luck, and keep us informed as to how things are going ... :)

Marc G. Fournier                   ICQ#7615664               IRC Nick: Scrappy
Systems Administrator @ hub.org 
primary: scrappy@hub.org           secondary: scrappy@{freebsd|postgresql}.org 


Tue, 4 Jan 2000 19:10:22 -0400 (AST)
The Hermit Hacker <scrappy@hub.org>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Open source
> Since writing the above, I was called to attend a telecon with my manager and
> the ITS managers from our two biggest customers to discuss exactly this issue.
> The decision has been made to deploy the PostgreSQL based server.  We all
> agreed that whatever happens to Interbase, the personal commitment by the
> PostgreSQL folks is not likely to dry up.  Hence the code will continue to
> improve over time.  I believe that they clearly understand how important
> reliability is to a database server.

All's well that end's well...

I have been very impressed over the three years of work on PostgreSQL
that everything is done is such a civilized matter.  I mention that in
my book and in the development history.

Not sure how we have achieved this, but we certainly have.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle
  maillist@candle.pha.pa.us            |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Tue, 4 Jan 2000 18:42:30 -0500 (EST)
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Open source
> > Since writing the above, I was called to attend a telecon with my
> > manager and the ITS managers from our two biggest customers to discuss
> > exactly this issue. The decision has been made to deploy the
> > PostgreSQL based server.  We all agreed that whatever happens to
> > Interbase, the personal commitment by the PostgreSQL folks is not
> > likely to dry up.  Hence the code will continue to improve over time.  
> > I believe that they clearly understand how important reliability is to
> > a database server.
> > 
> > There is a good chance that the Borland decision will have a
> > benificial ripple effect on PG as other engineers turn their attention
> > to Open Source alternatives.
> > 
> > Wish us luck, we will load the new software on our customers' servers
> > for a FOT (field operational test) next week.
> 
> Good luck, and keep us informed as to how things are going ... :)

Let me add we are planning a 7.0 release in the next few months that
improves reliability and adds new features.  You can actually try the
snapshot if you want to see how we are doing.  6.5.* is based in code
that solidified in June of 1999, which is ages ago in PostgreSQL time.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle
  maillist@candle.pha.pa.us            |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Tue, 4 Jan 2000 18:44:21 -0500 (EST)
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Open source
Stephen Birch wrote:

> Jan Wieck wrote:
>
> >      I haven't seen that many. And what kind of a project leader must it be,
> >      that a simple announcement causes the work of several programmers over
> >      months (sounds at least like a man-year) to be thrown away? IMHO the
> >      kind of PL, companies like M$ are targeting with their huge amount of
> >      announcements.
> >
>
> Ouch - that hurt.

     Pardon for beeing that harsh, but similar to you (as Marc said you
     haven't had your first cup of coffee), I missed my required amount of
     beer :-)

> We now have PG based servers under test in the lab and are still solving PG
> issues before releasing alpha code.  Of course, the IB announcement forces us
> to rethink the issue.

     That sounds totally different to your first message. This is definitely
     a PUSH BREAK for possible limitation of loss.

> Since writing the above, I was called to attend a telecon with my manager and
> the ITS managers from our two biggest customers to discuss exactly this issue.
> The decision has been made to deploy the PostgreSQL based server.  We all
> agreed that whatever happens to Interbase, the personal commitment by the
> PostgreSQL folks is not likely to dry up.  Hence the code will continue to
> improve over time.  I believe that they clearly understand how important
> reliability is to a database server.

     Great news. Be sure, I'll be one of the last rats leaving the ship.

> There is a good chance that the Borland decision will have a benificial ripple
> effect on PG as other engineers turn their attention to Open Source
> alternatives.

     There aleady is a noticeable turn in attention. Creative recently
     decided to put their SB-Live! drivers for Linux under GPL (after they
     had severe problems with IRQ and DMA handling at least in the SMP
     environment). One month later, the driver totally fit's my needs. Well,
     they're a hardware vendor, primarily selling their cards to make money.

     OTOH, I'm an SAP R/3 base consultant for years now. And all these DB
     runtime license discussions are annoying. SAP needs about 2-3 months to
     port R/3 to a new database. But they need another year or so to ship it
     due to their internal quality assurance policy. And it's a not to
     underestimate efford impact to support it in the future. The same
     applies to the OS corner, but they decided to port R/3 to Linux anyway,
     because coupling the benefits of the UNIX world (WRT administration
     issues) with the low cost level of PC hardware, is definitely worth the
     above efford.

     So I wouldn't be surprised if SAP, one of the biggest software vendors
     worldwide, would decide to support an open source database too at some
     point in the future. And something like that might be the intention of
     Inprise. As we both know, a customer usually keeps his database world
     consistent to be able to share knowledge inside the company. So if they
     can save tenth of thousands of dollars DB-license fee per year (a
     usually small fee in the SAP market) when moving to an open source
     database, they will decide to do so. And at that point, they'll need to
     port their intranet-, internet- and other solutions as well.

     If it's not true (as someone rumored) that Inprise lost the key
     developers, that'd be the point.

> Wish us luck, we will load the new software on our customers' servers for a FOT
> (field operational test) next week.

     Report any problems ASAP, and we'll help to make it a success-story.

> Steve

Jan

--

#======================================================================#
# It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
# Let's break this rule - forgive me.                                  #
#========================================= wieck@debis.com (Jan Wieck) #




Wed, 05 Jan 2000 00:47:03 +0100
Jan Wieck <wieck@debis.com>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Open source
At 02:50 PM 1/4/00 -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:

>Another _big_ issue is how clean the code is.  MySQL, for example,
>probably loses tons of people because their code is so poorly designed,
>and just plain ugly to me.

I'll have to say that the Postgres code's quite easy to follow, at
least at the "grasp-the-big-picture" level at which I've been reading
it on a casual, off-and-on basis.  Understanding it well enough to
contribute - well, that's another issue 'cause by its nature it is
a fairly complex beast!  



- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza@pacifier.com>
  Nature photos, on-line guides, Pacific Northwest
  Rare Bird Alert Service and other goodies at
  http://donb.photo.net.

Tue, 04 Jan 2000 15:49:31 -0800
Don Baccus <dhogaza@pacifier.com>
Re: [HACKERS] Inprise/Borland releasing Interbase as Opensource
I have now created a test case that demonstrate the HEAP_MOVED_IN during
vacuum problem.  Since the tar ball is 182k - I put it on an ftp site
instead of mailing it.

You can grab it from the following location:

 http://www.ironmountainsystems.com/heap_moved_in/

The tar ball contains two files - a shell script (show_bug) and a pg_dump
dump.  The shell script does the following using the dump file:

1. Create database ntis
2. Create table msg and populate it.
3. Use trim() twice.
4. Vacuum.

The three interesting commands reside at the end of ntis.dmp:

update msg set description = trim(description);
update msg set owner = trim(owner);
vacuum;

when the script "show_bug" is run, we get the following output:

CREATE DATABASE
You are now connected to database ntis.
CREATE
UPDATE 12069
UPDATE 12069
ERROR:  HEAP_MOVED_IN was not expected

One interesting point: if either one of the trim operations is omitted,
vacuum does not give the HEAP_MOVED_IN error.  I also notice that if you
change ntis.dmp so a vacuum is done between the two, the problem goes away.

Any ideas?


Tom Lane wrote:

> The Hermit Hacker <scrappy@hub.org> writes:
> > "However, the biggest problem was reported recently, see "HEAP_MOVED_IN
> > during vacuum" posted on Saturday, no replies" ...
>
> >       Anyone have any comments on that last one?
>
> I replied to it --- not with any useful ideas I'm afraid, just asking
> for more info.  But if Stephen is claiming he was ignored, then he's
> not reading his email...
>
>                         regards, tom lane
>
> ************


Sun, 09 Jan 2000 10:45:20 -0800
Stephen Birch <sbirch@ironmountainsystems.com>
Re:HEAP_MOVED_IN during vacuum - test case
Stephen Birch <sbirch@ironmountainsystems.com> writes:
> I have now created a test case that demonstrate the HEAP_MOVED_IN during
> vacuum problem.

Using this script, I see no failure under either REL6_5_PATCHES or
current branch on HPUX 10.20 --- but I do see it in current sources
on a Linux box!  Platform-dependent problem, evidently.  Will start
digging.

Stephen, many thanks for creating a small, reproducible example.
I know that's often the hardest part of finding a bug...

			regards, tom lane

Sun, 09 Jan 2000 16:33:21 -0500
Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Re: [HACKERS] Re:HEAP_MOVED_IN during vacuum - test case 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pgsql-hackers@postgreSQL.org
> [mailto:owner-pgsql-hackers@postgreSQL.org]On Behalf Of Stephen Birch
>
> I have now created a test case that demonstrate the HEAP_MOVED_IN during
> vacuum problem.  Since the tar ball is 182k - I put it on an ftp site
> instead of mailing it.
>
> You can grab it from the following location:
>
>  http://www.ironmountainsystems.com/heap_moved_in/
>

The following patch seems to fix your case.
However I'm not sure it's a right solution.

Regards.

Hiroshi Inoue
Inoue@tpf.co.jp

Index: commands/vacuum.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/cvs/pgcurrent/backend/commands/vacuum.c,v
retrieving revision 1.18
diff -c -r1.18 vacuum.c
*** commands/vacuum.c	2000/01/05 03:05:35	1.18
--- commands/vacuum.c	2000/01/10 02:39:35
***************
*** 1049,1054 ****
--- 1049,1055 ----
  			   *idcur;
  	int			last_fraged_block,
  				last_vacuum_block,
+ 				last_movedin_block,
  				i = 0;
  	Size		tuple_len;
  	int			num_moved,
***************
*** 1084,1089 ****
--- 1085,1091 ----
  	vacuumed_pages = vacuum_pages->vpl_num_pages -
vacuum_pages->vpl_empty_end_pages;
  	last_vacuum_page = vacuum_pages->vpl_pagedesc[vacuumed_pages - 1];
  	last_vacuum_block = last_vacuum_page->vpd_blkno;
+ 	last_movedin_block = 0;
  	Assert(last_vacuum_block >= last_fraged_block);
  	cur_buffer = InvalidBuffer;
  	num_moved = 0;
***************
*** 1097,1102 ****
--- 1099,1107 ----
  		/* if it's reapped page and it was used by me - quit */
  		if (blkno == last_fraged_block && last_fraged_page->vpd_offsets_used >
0)
  			break;
+ 		/* couldn't shrink any more if this block has MOVED_INd tuples - quit */
+ 		if (blkno == last_movedin_block)
+ 			break;

  		buf = ReadBuffer(onerel, blkno);
  		page = BufferGetPage(buf);
***************
*** 1477,1482 ****
--- 1482,1489 ----
  					newtup.t_datamcxt = NULL;
  					newtup.t_data = (HeapTupleHeader) PageGetItem(ToPage, newitemid);
  					ItemPointerSet(&(newtup.t_self), vtmove[ti].vpd->vpd_blkno, newoff);
+ 					if (vtmove[i].vpd->vpd_blkno > last_movedin_block)
+ 						last_movedin_block = vtmove[i].vpd->vpd_blkno;

  					/*
  					 * Set t_ctid pointing to itself for last tuple in
***************
*** 1610,1615 ****
--- 1617,1624 ----
  			newtup.t_data = (HeapTupleHeader) PageGetItem(ToPage, newitemid);
  			ItemPointerSet(&(newtup.t_data->t_ctid), cur_page->vpd_blkno, newoff);
  			newtup.t_self = newtup.t_data->t_ctid;
+ 			if (cur_page->vpd_blkno > last_movedin_block)
+ 				last_movedin_block = cur_page->vpd_blkno;

  			/*
  			 * Mark old tuple as moved_off by vacuum and store vacuum XID



Mon, 10 Jan 2000 12:03:23 +0900
"Hiroshi Inoue" <Inoue@tpf.co.jp>
RE: [HACKERS] Re:HEAP_MOVED_IN during vacuum - test case
Stephen Birch <sbirch@ironmountainsystems.com> writes:
> I have now created a test case that demonstrate the HEAP_MOVED_IN during
> vacuum problem.

OK, I've sussed it.  Dunno if you want the details, but briefly: the
code was using the last element of a list of target pages (pages that
had room to insert more tuples) as a sentinel point to know when to
stop trying to move tuples out of source pages.  But there was also
an optimization in there to remove target pages from the target list
as soon as they got full (so as not to keep checking them).  Sure
enough, with the right data pattern it was possible to remove the
last modified page from the target-page list before the source loop
got to it, and then everything falls over.  I'm surprised we haven't
heard more complaints about this, actually --- it doesn't look like
the failure should be all that unlikely.

I have committed what I think is a proper fix into current sources,
but I don't really think it should be trusted until it's been through
a beta test cycle.  Instead, attached is a very low-risk patch that
just dikes out the code that tries to remove target pages early.
This will result in some marginal slowdown when vacuuming huge
relations, but I think it should be safe to plug into production
6.5.* servers.

Thanks again for the narrowly focused test case --- I suspect you
put quite a bit of time into developing it...

			regards, tom lane

*** src/backend/commands/vacuum.c.orig	Tue Jan  4 12:27:26 2000
--- src/backend/commands/vacuum.c	Sun Jan  9 23:16:10 2000
***************
*** 1253,1258 ****
--- 1253,1259 ----
  				{
  					if (!vc_enough_space(to_vpd, tlen))
  					{
+ #if 0							/* this code is broken */
  						if (to_vpd != last_fraged_page &&
  						 !vc_enough_space(to_vpd, vacrelstats->min_tlen))
  						{
***************
*** 1263,1268 ****
--- 1264,1270 ----
  							num_fraged_pages--;
  							Assert(last_fraged_page == fraged_pages->vpl_pagedesc[num_fraged_pages - 1]);
  						}
+ #endif
  						for (i = 0; i < num_fraged_pages; i++)
  						{
  							if (vc_enough_space(fraged_pages->vpl_pagedesc[i], tlen))
***************
*** 1517,1522 ****
--- 1519,1525 ----
  					WriteBuffer(cur_buffer);
  					cur_buffer = InvalidBuffer;
  
+ #if 0							/* this code is broken */
  					/*
  					 * If no one tuple can't be added to this page -
  					 * remove page from fraged_pages. - vadim 11/27/96
***************
*** 1534,1539 ****
--- 1537,1543 ----
  						num_fraged_pages--;
  						Assert(last_fraged_page == fraged_pages->vpl_pagedesc[num_fraged_pages - 1]);
  					}
+ #endif
  				}
  				for (i = 0; i < num_fraged_pages; i++)
  				{

Sun, 09 Jan 2000 23:31:49 -0500
Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Re: [HACKERS] Re:HEAP_MOVED_IN during vacuum - test case 
"Hiroshi Inoue" <Inoue@tpf.co.jp> writes:
> The following patch seems to fix your case.
> However I'm not sure it's a right solution.

That looks like nearly the same logic that I arrived at, although
what I committed included some additional code cleanups.  As I said
in my prior message, I don't fully trust it yet --- but I am glad
you came to the same conclusion.

			regards, tom lane

Sun, 09 Jan 2000 23:48:31 -0500
Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Re: [HACKERS] Re:HEAP_MOVED_IN during vacuum - test case 
I still can't believe how fast you guys are, but would like to thank
you.

If I understood the vacuum logic, I would check your fixes, but it is
still black magic to me!!  I did try the new code against the full
database and found no problems.  As far as I can tell, you found it.

Thanks again.

Steve


Tom Lane wrote:

> "Hiroshi Inoue" <Inoue@tpf.co.jp> writes:
> > The following patch seems to fix your case.
> > However I'm not sure it's a right solution.
>
> That looks like nearly the same logic that I arrived at, although
> what I committed included some additional code cleanups.  As I said
> in my prior message, I don't fully trust it yet --- but I am glad
> you came to the same conclusion.
>
>                         regards, tom lane


Sun, 09 Jan 2000 23:24:41 -0800
Stephen Birch <sbirch@ironmountainsystems.com>
Re: [HACKERS] Re:HEAP_MOVED_IN during vacuum - test case