Hi all,

I've been using PostgreSQL for a couple of high performance projects
recently and have been extremely impressed - much kudos to all involved in
bringing it this far. One thing that is limiting is the lack of fault
tolerance and load balancing.

Anyway, I've recently started lurking on the hackers mailing list and I'm
quite captivated by the addition of replication to PostgreSQL and note that
it is an urgent action item on the to-do list.

There is a lot of information out there on algorithms and approaches, and
I'm wondering who is leading this effort and how I can help. I've got quite
a few ideas on how to attack the problem, such as:

* defining the type of replication we are after (hot swap / consistent,
read-only clones, delayed etc). I'd be after the first - a hot swap cluster
with load balancing so a read (SELECT) can be serviced by any machine and an
modification (DELETE/UPDATE/INSERT) is propagated through the cluster
immediately. This would make PostgreSQL a viable alternative to that other
Enterprise level offering *cough* Oracle *cough*

* establishing the propagation process when initialising the replication

* implementing the propagation algorithm for modification queries

I'm currently employed as a C/C++/Java programmer, so I'm comfortable with
understanding and writing solid and clean C/C++ code.

I'm happy to whip up a document outlining my ideas...or post them to the
mailing list, or whatever really. Just want to help :)

Cheers,

Mark


Fri, 8 Jun 2001 14:35:31 +1000
"Mark Pritchard" <mark@tangent.net.au>
PostgreSQL and replication
>
> I've been using PostgreSQL for a couple of high performance projects
> recently and have been extremely impressed - much kudos to all involved in
> bringing it this far. One thing that is limiting is the lack of fault
> tolerance and load balancing.

webadmin (Bruce?):  You may want to make a link (from the TODO list) to

http://www.greatbridge.org/project/pgreplication/projdisplay.php

This is where most of the replication talk is being done and projects are
being worked on.

- Brandon

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 b. palmer,  bpalmer@crimelabs.net            pgp:crimelabs.net/bpalmer.pgp5


Fri, 8 Jun 2001 00:57:29 -0400 (EDT)
bpalmer <bpalmer@crimelabs.net>
Re: PostgreSQL and replication
Mark,

there is interesting project DBBalancer
(http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/dbbalancer)
which claims:

DBBalancer is some sort of middleware that would sit in between of database
clients, like C, C++, TCL, Java JDBC, Perl DBI, and a database server.
Currently the only server supported is Postgres, but the architecture is open
to embrace more servers in a future. One of his strongest (IMHO ;-)) points is
that it can be tried or used without changing a line of the existing code,
because the balancing is done at Postgres protocol level.

DBBalancer can do different things.

  * It's a connection pool...
  * ... a load balancer,
  * .. and a database replicator.

And can be used any combination of these things at the same time.

I just compiled it but didn't run yet. I think if this project has a
good architectural design and idea it would be nice to have it
works as a postgresql companion project. Why do we need yet another
replication hack instead of join efforts.

	Oleg
On Fri, 8 Jun 2001, Mark Pritchard wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I've been using PostgreSQL for a couple of high performance projects
> recently and have been extremely impressed - much kudos to all involved in
> bringing it this far. One thing that is limiting is the lack of fault
> tolerance and load balancing.
>
> Anyway, I've recently started lurking on the hackers mailing list and I'm
> quite captivated by the addition of replication to PostgreSQL and note that
> it is an urgent action item on the to-do list.
>
> There is a lot of information out there on algorithms and approaches, and
> I'm wondering who is leading this effort and how I can help. I've got quite
> a few ideas on how to attack the problem, such as:
>
> * defining the type of replication we are after (hot swap / consistent,
> read-only clones, delayed etc). I'd be after the first - a hot swap cluster
> with load balancing so a read (SELECT) can be serviced by any machine and an
> modification (DELETE/UPDATE/INSERT) is propagated through the cluster
> immediately. This would make PostgreSQL a viable alternative to that other
> Enterprise level offering *cough* Oracle *cough*
>
> * establishing the propagation process when initialising the replication
>
> * implementing the propagation algorithm for modification queries
>
> I'm currently employed as a C/C++/Java programmer, so I'm comfortable with
> understanding and writing solid and clean C/C++ code.
>
> I'm happy to whip up a document outlining my ideas...or post them to the
> mailing list, or whatever really. Just want to help :)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Mark
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command
>     (send "unregister YourEmailAddressHere" to majordomo@postgresql.org)
>

	Regards,
		Oleg
_____________________________________________________________
Oleg Bartunov, sci.researcher, hostmaster of AstroNet,
Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow University (Russia)
Internet: oleg@sai.msu.su, http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/
phone: +007(095)939-16-83, +007(095)939-23-83


Fri, 8 Jun 2001 17:47:18 +0300 (GMT)
Oleg Bartunov <oleg@sai.msu.su>
Re: PostgreSQL and replication