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* suitable for mission critical?
@ 1994-08-19 18:40 postgres@webcom.com
0 siblings, 1 reply; 7+ messages in thread
From: postgres@webcom.com @ 1994-08-19 18:40 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: legacy; +Cc: leavitt@webcom.com
Dear postgres users, gods, and godesses:
We're starting a small online-service on the Internet, with an HP-UX box
as our main server. We need a robust transaction engine to manage
our accounts, etc.
The commercial products that either run on the HP box or have client
APIs for HP-UX that allow us to use them from the HP are way out of
our budget.
Our first consideration is reliability. Performance is not a major
issue right now (although hopefully later it will be :) ). Another
major plus for us is a perl interface.
Given our budget constraints, and our low throughput requirements,
and the perl interface, and the cool POSTWUEL language, Postgres
looks very attractive. Our major concern about using it is reliability.
We can live with having to export, rebuild, and import a table once
in a while. We don't want to be fighting fires constatnly though, of
course.
The question I'm leading up to is: what are peoples' opinions
on the prudence of using Postres to run a small business? I know
it's not something you'd want to use to run a Fortune 500 accounting
application, but is it acceptable for something in the range of
50-200 invoices a month? Or would you strongly advise against
running our business on it?
The database should stay under 100MB over it's lifetime.
That's our main question. This next question is more just
curiosity. I don't care if nobody wants to take the time
to answer this one. I'll RTFM. :)
Question #2:
I haven't yet figured out just how OO Postgres really is.
I'm new to OO, so I can't pose formal questions, but can I
do stuff like this with postgres:
(pseudo quel)
customer.email("Your payment is late")
where customer.days_past_due > 30
customer.suspend where customer.days_past_due > 60
invoice.paid(fetch recvd.check.against_invoice
where received.check.date = today)
customer.set_status(":)") where customer.paid_up = TRUE
In other words, can I define methods on objects that accept
parms and operate on the instance object, or a set of
instances defined by an ad hoc set qualifer? And can these
methods be inherited? And can those methods be complex
transactions? And can the methods be inherited?
Okay, now I'll go see if I can figure out how to print that
postscript manual.
Thanks for your advice!
Chris
Web Communications
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^ permalink raw reply [nested|flat] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: suitable for mission critical?
@ 1994-08-22 01:29 Chris Maeda <cmaeda@cs.washington.edu>
parent: postgres@webcom.com
0 siblings, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread
From: Chris Maeda @ 1994-08-22 01:29 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: legacy; leavitt@webcom.com
Date: Fri, 19 Aug 1994 18:40:22 PDT
To: postgres@nobozo.CS.Berkeley.EDU
cc: leavitt@webcom.com
From: postgres@webcom.com
Subject: suitable for mission critical?
The question I'm leading up to is: what are peoples' opinions
on the prudence of using Postres to run a small business? I know
it's not something you'd want to use to run a Fortune 500 accounting
application, but is it acceptable for something in the range of
50-200 invoices a month? Or would you strongly advise against
running our business on it?
Insanity. Get some real business accounting software. There are
dozens of commercial packages on the PC. Do you want to write
accounting software or build your business?
==============================================================================
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the subject line ADD or DEL to "postgres-request@postgres.Berkeley.EDU"
If this fails, send mail to "post_questions@postgres.Berkeley.EDU" and
a human will deal with it. DO NOT post to the "postgres" mailing list.
==============================================================================
^ permalink raw reply [nested|flat] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: suitable for mission critical?
@ 1994-08-22 10:44 Chris Maeda <cmaeda@cs.washington.edu>
parent: David Allan Finch - work <sarum@monosys.com>
0 siblings, 1 reply; 7+ messages in thread
From: Chris Maeda @ 1994-08-22 10:44 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: David Allan Finch - work <sarum@monosys.com>; +Cc: legacy
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 1994 11:39:19 -0000
To: postgres@nobozo.CS.Berkeley.EDU
From: David Allan Finch - work <sarum@monosys.com>
Subject: Re: suitable for mission critical?
|> Insanity. Get some real business accounting software. There are
|> dozens of commercial packages on the PC. Do you want to write
|> accounting software or build your business?
This is not realy helpful is it. If you have the time, experinece
and are willing to fix it if it goes wrong, why not. Some companys
regaurd spending money but not there employees time with obhorence.
There is much much more to accounting than what a relational database
provides. Why would you want to throw away several months of your
life duplicating a <$1000 software package that you don't plan to
market? It's crazy.
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^ permalink raw reply [nested|flat] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: suitable for mission critical?
@ 1994-08-22 11:39 David Allan Finch - work <sarum@monosys.com>
0 siblings, 1 reply; 7+ messages in thread
From: David Allan Finch - work @ 1994-08-22 11:39 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: legacy
|> Insanity. Get some real business accounting software. There are
|> dozens of commercial packages on the PC. Do you want to write
|> accounting software or build your business?
This is not realy helpful is it. If you have the time, experinece
and are willing to fix it if it goes wrong, why not. Some companys
regaurd spending money but not there employees time with obhorence.
We build and used a bug tracing system using perl and postgres
whilst I was a the Bank of Nova Scotia, it had the same level
of insert transactions per month (about 5 a day). The searching
the database for statistics was a bit slow but the system never
when wrong (we did not spend the time on working out more
effective ways to do it, as it was fast enought for the perpose).
At the time the tools for creating forms and tables did not
exsits.
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^ permalink raw reply [nested|flat] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: suitable for mission critical?
@ 1994-08-23 01:52 Kai Petzke <wpp@marie.physik.tu-berlin.de>
parent: Chris Maeda <cmaeda@cs.washington.edu>
0 siblings, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread
From: Kai Petzke @ 1994-08-23 01:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Chris Maeda <cmaeda@cs.washington.edu>; +Cc: legacy
>
> Date: Mon, 22 Aug 1994 11:39:19 -0000
> To: postgres@nobozo.CS.Berkeley.EDU
> From: David Allan Finch - work <sarum@monosys.com>
> Subject: Re: suitable for mission critical?
>
> |> Insanity. Get some real business accounting software. There are
> |> dozens of commercial packages on the PC. Do you want to write
> |> accounting software or build your business?
Chris (not you, but the original poster) said in his mail, that his main
hardware is HP-UX, not PC. Also, most of the relevant data (like log-on
time of the users, etc.) has to be accounted on unix or at least TCP/IP
machines. In other words: your flame does not at all answer Chris'
needs.
> This is not realy helpful is it. If you have the time, experinece
> and are willing to fix it if it goes wrong, why not. Some companys
> regaurd spending money but not there employees time with obhorence.
>
> There is much much more to accounting than what a relational database
> provides. Why would you want to throw away several months of your
> life duplicating a <$1000 software package that you don't plan to
> market? It's crazy.
Why do you assume, that Chris will need "several months of his life time"
to write the software he needs? He did not say, that he was going to
program a nifty user interface. He needs a few tables, like customers,
bills, payments. When you do it the right way, and if you already have
good experience in unix tools (perl, awk, shell, etc.) you can set up such
a thing in one week or two.
For example, use pgperl to retrieve the data from the database, and output
it in TeX or *roff format. At the end of the script, tex and dvips or
groff are called to print the files. Voila, there is your report writer.
It is even more flexible than most commercial report generators.
Use pgbrowse for entering new customer data. Use plain ASCII files for
entering payments, and use perl to fold these into the database.
The backdraw is, that homemade scripts are hard to understand for others.
When Chris suddenly gets ill, will there be someone, who knows, how to
operate the software?
Kai
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If this fails, send mail to "post_questions@postgres.Berkeley.EDU" and
a human will deal with it. DO NOT post to the "postgres" mailing list.
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^ permalink raw reply [nested|flat] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: suitable for mission critical?
@ 1994-08-23 08:31 Larry Augustin <lma@dayton.Stanford.EDU>
0 siblings, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread
From: Larry Augustin @ 1994-08-23 08:31 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: legacy; sarum@monosys.com
>Chris Maeda <cmaeda@cs.washington.edu> writes:
>
>|> There is much much more to accounting than what a relational database
>|> provides. Why would you want to throw away several months of your
>|> life duplicating a <$1000 software package that you don't plan to
>|> market? It's crazy.
>
>This may be true, (and infact I would not write such a peice of
>software), but in some companies 1000 USD will not be spent, they
>would rather spend 1-6 months writing the software which will
>cost 3 to 6 times more.
Please tell me where I can get this $1000 accounting system.
I'm using postgres for an accounting system right now. I'd be happy
to spend only $1000 for a working accounting and inventory management
system accessible from multiple sites over the net. I don't know of
any.
Larry
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^ permalink raw reply [nested|flat] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: suitable for mission critical?
@ 1994-08-23 10:47 David Allan Finch - work <sarum@monosys.com>
0 siblings, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread
From: David Allan Finch - work @ 1994-08-23 10:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: legacy
Chris Maeda <cmaeda@cs.washington.edu> writes:
|> There is much much more to accounting than what a relational database
|> provides. Why would you want to throw away several months of your
|> life duplicating a <$1000 software package that you don't plan to
|> market? It's crazy.
This may be true, (and infact I would not write such a peice of
software), but in some companies 1000 USD will not be spent, they
would rather spend 1-6 months writing the software which will
cost 3 to 6 times more.
==============================================================================
To add/remove yourself to/from the POSTGRES mailing list: send mail with
the subject line ADD or DEL to "postgres-request@postgres.Berkeley.EDU"
If this fails, send mail to "post_questions@postgres.Berkeley.EDU" and
a human will deal with it. DO NOT post to the "postgres" mailing list.
==============================================================================
^ permalink raw reply [nested|flat] 7+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~1994-08-23 10:47 UTC | newest]
Thread overview: 7+ messages (download: mbox.gz follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
1994-08-19 18:40 suitable for mission critical? postgres@webcom.com
1994-08-22 01:29 ` Chris Maeda <cmaeda@cs.washington.edu>
1994-08-22 11:39 Re: suitable for mission critical? David Allan Finch - work <sarum@monosys.com>
1994-08-22 10:44 ` Chris Maeda <cmaeda@cs.washington.edu>
1994-08-23 01:52 ` Kai Petzke <wpp@marie.physik.tu-berlin.de>
1994-08-23 08:31 Re: suitable for mission critical? Larry Augustin <lma@dayton.Stanford.EDU>
1994-08-23 10:47 Re: suitable for mission critical? David Allan Finch - work <sarum@monosys.com>
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