Jon Udell (Byte) on Linux/ODBC and MySQLDA difficulties
http://www.byte.com/column/BYT19991104S0001 wow...I feel a whole lot better about myself after reading that Jon Udell had difficulties linking Zope to MySQL on Linux ;) His experience sounds a lot like mine, except I was eventually able to get it working. yay ! Actually the article is mostly about his percieved need for ODBC support on Linux. Darcy -- --------------------------------------------------- Ph: (734) 764 3377 Email: darcyc@engin.umich.edu URL: http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~darcyc/ --------------------------------------------------- 'If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate' ..... Steven Wright
wow...I feel a whole lot better about myself after reading that Jon Udell had difficulties linking Zope to MySQL on Linux ;) His experience sounds a lot like mine, except I was eventually able to get it working. yay !
So just what is the state of MySQL and Zope? I know from lurking on the lists that MySQL's lack of transaction support doesn't make it very popular with some people, but one heck of a lot of people swear by it. I know more people who use MySQL than use PostgreSQL. Lack of strong MySQL support in Zope is a definite weak spot IMHO. Or am I totally out to lunch here. karl ----------------------------------------------------------------- Karl Fast
On 11/9/99 11:54 AM, Karl Fast at karl.fast@pobox.com wrote:
wow...I feel a whole lot better about myself after reading that Jon Udell had difficulties linking Zope to MySQL on Linux ;) His experience sounds a lot like mine, except I was eventually able to get it working. yay !
So just what is the state of MySQL and Zope?
It's unsupported by Digital Creations. We've been looking for a keeper for a while, someone who is interested in the time required to keep it in sync. We are driven by what our customers use, and that's largely Oracle and Sybase (with DB2 coming).
I know from lurking on the lists that MySQL's lack of transaction support doesn't make it very popular with some people, but one heck of a lot of people swear by it. I know more people who use MySQL than use PostgreSQL. Lack of strong MySQL support in Zope is a definite weak spot IMHO.
Or am I totally out to lunch here.
Not totally, but simply nibbling on a tea sandwich :-) The reason it's not popular with *us* is the transaction support, which is critical to the kind of mission-sensitive revenue-stream applications we do for our customers. Once it has transaction support, we can re-evaluate that, but for now it's verbotten for serious projects around here. It's just a data integrity issue. Chris -- | Christopher Petrilli Python Powered Digital Creations, Inc. | petrilli@digicool.com http://www.digicool.com
So just what is the state of MySQL and Zope?
It's unsupported by Digital Creations. We've been looking for a keeper for a while, someone who is interested in the time required to keep it in sync. We are driven by what our customers use, and that's largely Oracle and Sybase (with DB2 coming).
Te reason it's not popular with *us* is the transaction support, which is critical to the kind of mission-sensitive revenue-stream applications we do for our customers. Once it has transaction support, we can re-evaluate that, but for now it's verbotten for serious projects around here. It's just a data integrity issue.
Good answer. Thanks. I'm wondering if anyone else out there has opinions on this. Some non-DC folks. Do you use MySQL? Do you want to? Why or why not? What do you think about it's current status in Zope? I know the place I do most of my sub-contracting with uses MySQL extensively. They're reluctant to switch to anything else (transaction support aside) because (a) it's yet another tool to learn, (b) they still need to support all stuff they've build in MySQL, (c) they don't seem to need transactions (or they just work around it). Is the Postgress driver in better shape? I'm just trying to get a feel for the state of open source DB's and Zope, and if something needs to be done, where it's at (I'd probably volunteer, but this is outta my league) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Karl Fast
On Tue, 9 Nov 1999, Karl Fast wrote:
I'm wondering if anyone else out there has opinions on this. Some non-DC folks. Do you use MySQL? Do you want to? Why or why not? What do you think about it's current status in Zope?
I have used MySql for a db-driven web site with PHP3, for storing weekly event information that is web searchable. This is for a local community newspaper I helped out pro-bono. As mentioned before for the kind of industrial strength web-sites one would build with Zope, MySQL is a mismatch. MySQL works great for information that is high volume but not high value - in the sense that it can be easily replaced if lost or corrupted, or that harm done is not high. Clearly that is not the case where e-commerce is involved and that is the trend, increasingly, in high-end web-sites. Jon Udell identifies an important issue - that the open source community (mostly) does not appreciate the importance of industrial strength data storage and access to the success of a platform (this criticism does not apply to the folks behind Zope). Hence the lack of a major well publicised, staffed and funded effort to unify the various data access technologies on Unix ( and Linux ). Thus we see the surprising widespread use of MySQL in large scale web sites (such as eGroups etc) when it is obvious that the lack of transactions will bite them sooner rather than later. Also, the problems of moving legacy data between DB platforms is not taken into account when such decisions are made often on purely idealogical considerations. All in all, unless you are planning to have a site that will probably not expand much (or you just simply cannot afford it) go with Oracle, Sybase or DB2. A year down the line you'll be very glad you did - your job may depend on it. -- Nitin Borwankar nitin@borwankar.com
_______________________________________________ Zope maillist - Zope@zope.org http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope No cross posts or HTML encoding! (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev )
What about Postgresql? Do people feel that is an acceptable option?
On Tue, 9 Nov 1999, Karl Fast wrote:
I'm wondering if anyone else out there has opinions on
this. Some non-DC
folks. Do you use MySQL? Do you want to? Why or why not? What do you think about it's current status in Zope?
I have used MySql for a db-driven web site with PHP3, for storing weekly event information that is web searchable. This is for a local community newspaper I helped out pro-bono.
As mentioned before for the kind of industrial strength web-sites one would build with Zope, MySQL is a mismatch. MySQL works great for information that is high volume but not high value - in the sense that it can be easily replaced if lost or corrupted, or that harm done is not high.
Clearly that is not the case where e-commerce is involved and that is the trend, increasingly, in high-end web-sites.
Jon Udell identifies an important issue - that the open source community (mostly) does not appreciate the importance of industrial strength data storage and access to the success of a platform (this criticism does not apply to the folks behind Zope). Hence the lack of a major well publicised, staffed and funded effort to unify the various data access technologies on Unix ( and Linux ).
Thus we see the surprising widespread use of MySQL in large scale web sites (such as eGroups etc) when it is obvious that the lack of transactions will bite them sooner rather than later. Also, the problems of moving legacy data between DB platforms is not taken into account when such decisions are made often on purely idealogical considerations.
All in all, unless you are planning to have a site that will probably not expand much (or you just simply cannot afford it) go with Oracle, Sybase or DB2. A year down the line you'll be very glad you did - your job may depend on it.
-- Nitin Borwankar nitin@borwankar.com
On 11/9/99 1:57 PM, Geoff Nordli at geoff@gnaa.net wrote:
What about Postgresql? Do people feel that is an acceptable option?
Feature set wise ,it's nice, but it's had some pretty rough roads since it's moved to SQL in bug problems, and I've heard serious performance restrictions. That having been said, I know a lot of people who use it heavily. Chris -- | Christopher Petrilli Python Powered Digital Creations, Inc. | petrilli@digicool.com http://www.digicool.com
Are you saying that it is unstable? I have always perceived that it was a rock solid product, but I have never worked with it in a production environment.
-----Original Message----- From: Christopher Petrilli [mailto:petrilli@digicool.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 1999 12:08 PM To: geoff@gnaa.net; 'Nitin Borwankar'; 'Karl Fast' Cc: zope@zope.org Subject: Re: [Zope] Jon Udell (Byte) on Linux/ODBC and MySQLDA difficulties
On 11/9/99 1:57 PM, Geoff Nordli at geoff@gnaa.net wrote:
What about Postgresql? Do people feel that is an acceptable option?
Feature set wise ,it's nice, but it's had some pretty rough roads since it's moved to SQL in bug problems, and I've heard serious performance restrictions. That having been said, I know a lot of people who use it heavily.
Chris -- | Christopher Petrilli Python Powered Digital Creations, Inc. | petrilli@digicool.com http://www.digicool.com
I am currently using it with Zope 1.10.3 on slackware and have thus far had no problems. Jim Sanford ----- Original Message ----- From: Geoff Nordli <geoff@gnaa.net> To: 'Christopher Petrilli' <petrilli@digicool.com>; 'Nitin Borwankar' <nitin@borwankar.com>; 'Karl Fast' <karl.fast@pobox.com> Cc: <zope@zope.org> Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 1999 2:31 PM Subject: [Zope] What about Postgresql as a viable database?
Are you saying that it is unstable?
I have always perceived that it was a rock solid product, but I have never worked with it in a production environment.
-----Original Message----- From: Christopher Petrilli [mailto:petrilli@digicool.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 1999 12:08 PM To: geoff@gnaa.net; 'Nitin Borwankar'; 'Karl Fast' Cc: zope@zope.org Subject: Re: [Zope] Jon Udell (Byte) on Linux/ODBC and MySQLDA difficulties
On 11/9/99 1:57 PM, Geoff Nordli at geoff@gnaa.net wrote:
What about Postgresql? Do people feel that is an acceptable option?
Feature set wise ,it's nice, but it's had some pretty rough roads since it's moved to SQL in bug problems, and I've heard serious performance restrictions. That having been said, I know a lot of people who use it heavily.
Chris -- | Christopher Petrilli Python Powered Digital Creations, Inc. | petrilli@digicool.com http://www.digicool.com
_______________________________________________ Zope maillist - Zope@zope.org http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope No cross posts or HTML encoding! (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev )
On 11/9/99 6:26 PM, Jim Sanford at jsanford@atinucleus.com wrote:
I am currently using it with Zope 1.10.3 on slackware and have thus far had no problems.
Jim Sanford
Please understand I've not looked at it since it went from Postgres to PostgreSQL, and it initially had some problems, I don't know what it looks like today. I have heavily used it's "big brother" Illustra. Chris -- | Christopher Petrilli Python Powered Digital Creations, Inc. | petrilli@digicool.com http://www.digicool.com
On Tue, 9 Nov 1999, Geoff Nordli wrote:
Are you saying that it is unstable?
I have always perceived that it was a rock solid product, but I have never worked with it in a production environment.
My experience of PostgreSQL was to compile it, install it, create a few users and create startup scripts for machine reboots. That was about 6 months ago now - absolutly zero problem reports from the staff using it for development. Which is good as I get to ignore it totally and get back to real work using Oracle :-) My impression was PostgreSQL was that its main acceptance problem was lack of marketing. If I had to ship a product tied to an no-cost RDBMS I'd go with PostgreSQL or possibly Gadfly (havn't looked into its feature set). ___ // Zen (alias Stuart Bishop) Work: zen@cs.rmit.edu.au // E N Senior Systems Alchemist Play: zen@shangri-la.dropbear.id.au //__ Computer Science, RMIT WWW: http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/~zen
On Tue, 9 Nov 1999, Karl Fast wrote:
wow...I feel a whole lot better about myself after reading that Jon Udell had difficulties linking Zope to MySQL on Linux ;) His experience sounds a lot like mine, except I was eventually able to get it working. yay !
So just what is the state of MySQL and Zope?
I know from lurking on the lists that MySQL's lack of transaction support doesn't make it very popular with some people, but one heck of a lot of people swear by it. I know more people who use MySQL than use PostgreSQL. Lack of strong MySQL support in Zope is a definite weak spot IMHO.
Zope's architecture requires a proper transactional RDBMS - the weak spot is MySQL's lack of a transaction mechanism. MySQL is simply not yet good enough to integrate with Zope. My gut feeling is that the people who are capable of helping the MySQLDA project arn't going to, as they realize that it is pointless to create what would be fundamentally broken and will instead wait until MySQL is ready. Or arn't using MySQL at all as they understand its limitations and databases are important enough to them that they actually want to maintain data integrity. - Zen, who is sick of staff wanting to develop databases in Access because they equate 'good' with 'popular' and is probably drawing unfair parallels in his head with MySQL and generally being unfair and grumpy. humph. ___ // Zen (alias Stuart Bishop) Work: zen@cs.rmit.edu.au // E N Senior Systems Alchemist Play: zen@shangri-la.dropbear.id.au //__ Computer Science, RMIT WWW: http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/~zen
participants (7)
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Christopher Petrilli -
Darcy Clark -
Geoff Nordli -
Jim Sanford -
Karl Fast -
Nitin Borwankar -
Stuart 'Zen' Bishop