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From: postgres@webcom.com
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Subject: suitable for mission critical?
To: postgres@postgres.Berkeley.EDU
Date: Fri, 19 Aug 94 18:40:22 PDT
Cc: leavitt@webcom.com
Mailer: Elm [revision: 70.85.2.1]
Resent-To: postgres-redist@postgres.Berkeley.EDU
Resent-Date: Fri, 19 Aug 94 18:52:08 -0700
Resent-XMts: smtp

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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