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Thanks Stefan

So while doing the benchmarking of the various parameters, Stefan pointed out the my numbers were ridiculously low. I wasn't really paying attention because I was looking at differences between parameters but then he posted me an example of a single thread pgbench using my same parameters. His machine is a dual core connected to 10 spindles on a NetAPP. In theory my machine should be faster. It is not. …

8.3.7 TPS and checkpoint segments

Continuing my postgresql.conf changes I ran a new test yesterday with checkpoint_segments set to 300. As a reminder the original results and specs of the machine being used in the test are here. The results of the new test below:
pghost:  pgport: 6000 nclients: 4 nxacts: 1000000 dbName: bench
transaction type: TPC-B (sort of)
scaling factor: 100
number of clients: 4
number of transactions per client: 1000000
number of transactions …

Default TPS performance of 8.3.7

I recently purchased some used hardware for some performance testing of PostgreSQL. I didn't want to interrupt the great work that Mark Wong was doing with the PostgreSQL Performance Lab. The testing I am doing is a bit different than Mark's. Where Mark is testing various filesystem performance via PostgreSQL using DBT2 and FIO and wanted to go up a level. I am testing using the PostgreSQL tool pgbench which …

Surprising events from a top 20 list

In a completely unscientific review of community popularity I was reviewing the active members of various channels on #freenode. For those that don't know, Freenode is the defacto destination for the Open Source community on IRC. This is where you will find official community support channels for such open source luminaries as #gentoo, #ubuntu, #mysql and of course #postgresql. The List
  1. Ubuntu
  2. Gentoo
  3. Linux
  4. Debian
  5. Python
  6. ArchLinux
  7. Django
  8. Haskell
  9. Perl …

Long Running Request Handlers and Python Garbage Collection

While working on a Simpycity + Pylons environment the other day, I noticed that my app was leaking Postgres connection handles. This is not behaviour you ever want to see, especially in software as vital as Simpycity. Investigation and testing demonstrated pretty conclusively here, and here that the Python garbage collector was not immediately cleaning up dead/unreferenced objects. Specifically, in the test case below,

 def foo():
      r = Raw("SELECT count(*) …

My turn on Oracle purchasing Sun.

I feel like I am coming late to this topic. All the pundits have already had there say and the blogosphere has been rampant. I have been talking with a lot of MySQL folks lately, encouraging them to at least test PostgreSQL as an alternative. MySQL folks are nervous. They don't like the opportunity Oracle brings to the table. This morning I was asked quite bluntly, "From your perspective what …

The great netbook giveaway

At PostgreSQL Conference East, Platinum Sponsor EnterpriseDB raffled two Netbooks. This is the video of the raffle (only 5 minutes). Of particular interest is a certain Major Contributors response.

Escaping data madness

We had an interesting issue crop up this past week. The question was, "How do we properly escape the following string...?". The string was:
You can't have it that way can you?
That seems like a pretty simple string right? On insert you would do one of the following:
   (E'You can\'t have it that way can you?');
   ($$You can't have it that way can you?$$);
   ('You can''t have it that …

Registration closing for PostgreSQL Conference East

As a reminder for all of those in our community that like to register at the last minuted (that means most of us), registration will be closing on Wednesday April first. On line registration is much easier than registering at the door so please bounce on over to PostgreSQL.us/purchase and get your registration in.

PostgreSQL Training

Command Prompt has offered training since we began as a one man shop back in 1997. It has always been, "by request". Since that time a lot of things have changed and we are regularly receiving training requests from multiple companies. We have decided to finally bring our training into the light and make it a forefront of the services that CMD offers. Interestingly we are going to be providing …