Last night on the way home my clutch gave out, making it near impossible to shift in and out of gear while driving. [[image /xzilla/templates/default/img/emoticons/sad.png alt=”:-(” style=”display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;” class=”emoticon” /]] I think the clutch springs are going bad, but took it into the shop this morning to have it checked. That was a hairy ride… hopefully it won’t require to much work or we might have to deprecate christmas this year…

I’ve volunteered to help out with a project to rebuild the IUCN’s [http://www.iucn.org/afesg/aed/index.html African Elephant Database] system using PostgreSQL related tools. The project is being lead by [http://www.google.com/search?&q=African+Elephant+Specialist+Group+Julian+Blanc Julian Blanc] and we’ve already had [http://pgfoundry.org/project/memberlist.php?group_id=1000156 a few other community members] volunteer so I am providing mostly administrative and technical oversite at this point. We’ve set up a [http://pgfoundry.org/projects/wilddb/ project on pgfoundry] to coordinate development. The current focus is converting it from an Access/ArcGIS based system into a PostgreSQL/PostGIS based system, if you have any experience with any of those technologies we’d love to have you participate. We’ve setup a [http://pgfoundry.org/mailman/listinfo/wilddb-general mailing list] for project discussion and we’ve uploaded a fair bit of [http://pgfoundry.org/docman/?group_id=1000156 documentation] on to the website that you can look through. This is a really good cause, so I hope we’ll see a number of you get involved.

Just a few minor updates I’ve done to the PostgreSQL webite I thought I’d let you know about: 1) Uploaded the optimized [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/manuals/ 8.1 pdf documentation files] that we provided by Mike Ellsworth. These have been run through Acrobat Pro 7 and should be a little smaller and provide snappier response especially when workng with bookmarks. 2) Updated the [http://www.postgresql.org/about/awards PostgreSQL Awards page] to mention that we also won the [http://interactive.linuxjournal.com/article/8293 2005 Linux Journal Editors Choice Award]. That’s three years straight for that one; anyone have any others? 3) Several new user quotes have been put into the system. You’ll see these rotate around on the main website periodically, but you can also see a list of all the user quotes by visiting the [http://www.postgresql.org/about/quotesarchive user quotes archive]. Got something you’d like to say about PostgreSQL? Send us an email Got a lot you’d like to say about PostgreSQL? We’d love to have a [http://www.postgresql.org/about/casestudies/ case study]. Drop us a note at [email protected] or [email protected].

Neil beat me to posting on this, but it actually turned out more interesting when I went back to read it because of a few choice user comments that appeared in the follow-up comments on thier site. The thing that really struck me was not that PostgreSQL was able to out-perform MySQL, but that it seemed to do it so thoroughly. Not only was it able to run the complex queries faster, it was able to run the count queries faster, and was able to use less memory, and use less disk space, and had faster load times. And all of this even the the FeedLounge guys clearly have a fair amount of experience with MySQL (as evidenced by the performance suggestions in thier comments, and that they were all tried and then some).

It really makes me skeptical that MySQL could ever provide a capable MVCC style replacement for InnoDB should Oracle decide to put the screws to them, which I would guess would mean even more people looking into PostgreSQL in the next year or so. This might mean trouble for MySQL, if they begin to lose the enterprise level OLTP market to PostgreSQL, and people begin switching to the superior sqlite for thier simple websites (rather than use the more complex myisam system MySQL provides), what’s the market for MySQL? They have always been considered a golden example of an open source business model, and given the VC they have floating around and that they are in bed tight with some large companies, I don’t think they are going away anytime soon, but the future really seems cloudy imho.

In any case, hopefully we can cajole the FeedLounger guys to provide a few choice quotes for the PostgreSQL website, and maybe puff things up into a full case study once they have been going for 6 months or so.

Apparently there has been some confusion over this, but Tom made it clear, 7.2 is no longer supported. I’ve moved around the documentation on the website, and Marc has updated the FTP servers as well, to better reflect this. Hopefully no one is still using 7.2 out there.

Got back from [http://www.chemungcounty.com/bin/site/templates/default.asp?_resolutionfile=default.asp&_resolutionpathname=wrapperspath&area_2=content-location Upstate New York] yesterday; had some good turkey, ate some of the [http://www.google.com/local?num=20&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&safe=off&q=bernie+murray%27s&near=Elmira,+NY&sa=X&oi=localr best wings ever], and pretty much avoided all things on line execpt for [http://www.1980-games.com/us/ 1980-games.com]. Now have a huge stack of work to do, hopefully some of it will be exciting.

Well, after [http://people.planetpostgresql.org/xzilla/index.php?/archives/91-Is-Sun-getting-ready-to-join-the-PostgreSQL-community.html some speculation], they have made it official. From the [http://news.com.com/Sun+backs+open-source+database+PostgreSQL/2100-1014_3-5958850.html article on CNet]: “We’re going to take (the database) and do tighter integration with Solaris and support it on a worldwide basis,” Loiacono said. The company expects to offer database-related services by next month. ” Time to check off “Get the backing of a major hardware vendor” from the World Domination task list [[image /xzilla/templates/default/img/emoticons/smile.png alt=”:-)” style=”display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;” class=”emoticon” /]] [http://tb.news.com/tb.cgi/2100-1014_3-5958850 ]

So after laying in his bed for a good hour or so jibber-jabbering and playing, I went in and told Dylan (my 4 year old) that he needed to lay quite and go to sleep because he had to get up for school in the morning… to which he replied “Am I going to be deprecated?”.

Robert learned how to blow bubbles with bubblegum today. He was using “[http://www.oldtimecandy.com/super-bubble-gum.htm super bubble]” brand gum, an oldie but apparently still a goodie. He’d been practicing all afternoon and is quite happy [[image /xzilla/templates/default/img/emoticons/smile.png alt=”:-)” style=”display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;” class=”emoticon” /]] This also makes for cheap entertainment for Dylan and Emma, as they love watching him blow bubbles now [[image /xzilla/templates/default/img/emoticons/smile.png alt=”:-)” style=”display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;” class=”emoticon” /]]

You know it’s time to make a new release when the majority of emails responses to people installing your project are “it’s fixed in CVS”. And so we have released [http://pgfoundry.org/frs/?group_id=1000124 wikipgedia 0.0.2]. This version adds full suport for searching via tsearch2, which is now a requirement. For those new to tsearch, check out [http://www.weltraumsofa.de/blog/index.php?itemid=251 Jutta Horstmann’s blog] for some interesting information. Also I am happy to say that we’ve fixed the mediawiki import functionality, which was used for the successful import of the full wikipedia xml dump (which takes about 90 gb’s if you’re wondering). Hopefully we’ll get more details as the become available. Of course we are interested in more testers and certainly more developers. If you’re interested please feel free to claim any of the tracker items available, or make new ones. If you’re testing and uncover issues, please report them to the [http://pgfoundry.org/tracker/?atid=534&group_id=1000124&func=browse bug tracker] as well. Thanks again for those who have helped out so far.