Question: Who's Using Postgres

I understand where you are coming from. I worked for a city government
up until a year ago. I built our intranet using Linux on a discarded
server with apache and postgreSQL. But they didn't care about the fact
that is was free. They wanted all data to be stored on the mainframe. I
got tired of the scene and I left to join Great Bridge. We know the rest
of this story.

I'm now back in city government, although with a different city. They
are much more open to creativity here and are allowing me to develop on
Linux running postgreSQL. I'm in the process of developing a Job
Information System for our Personnel department, whom I work directly
for, that will use Apache, PostgreSQL, JSP's, and some Perl. So I'm a
happy camper now.

Put together a proposal for them. In one column, list the costs for
installing PostgreSQL on your existing Linux servers. In the other
column, list the cost of a server running Windows XP/2000 with MS SQL
server. Don't forget to include the cost of licenses for all 15 users
and. Also throw in Visual Studio .net which was just announced the other
day. I believe its around $1000 per user. Let them decide.

On Fri, 2002-02-15 at 10:08, Corey W. Gibbs wrote:

Good Morning Everyone,
I have a general question about who is using Postgresql. This is not a
marketing survey and any information I collect will only be used by me.
Here's the background.
I have a user who has developed a Visual Basic application that uses MS
Access files for it's data storage. Currently, this datafile is about
fifty megs in size. There are about fifteen users who use these files in
the application, needless to say, this is having a severe impact on our
network. After much heartache and pain, I was able to convince him that we
need to look at a RDBMS to put the data on. Of course, I suggested
Postgres as an alternative to MS SQL server for many reasons. Linux runs
on all of my servers, I'm happy with it's performance and reliability. I'm
currently running Postgres as my web server's backend. Opensource software
does not scare me. However, his side of the camp comes from the Windows
world. "It has to be MS SQL server. It'll be easier to program to than
any other server." "Opensource software isn't going any where." "Can we
depend on it?" are common questions and statements I have heard.
I am not trying to start a ruckus or a flamewar, but I would like to know
who's using Postgres out there. What's the application? How big are your
databases? Are you using Visual Basic or C to connect to it through ODBC
or are you using a Web interface?
Any information you can provide will be greatly appreciated.
thank you
Corey W. Gibbs

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--
Jeff Self
Information Technology Analyst
Department of Personnel
City of Newport News
2400 Washington Ave.
Newport News, VA 23607
757-926-6930

On Fri, Feb 15, 2002 at 07:08:06AM -0800, Corey W. Gibbs wrote:

Good Morning Everyone,
I have a general question about who is using Postgresql. This is not a
marketing survey and any information I collect will only be used by me.
Here's the background.

[snip]

I am not trying to start a ruckus or a flamewar, but I would like to know
who's using Postgres out there. What's the application? How big are your
databases? Are you using Visual Basic or C to connect to it through ODBC
or are you using a Web interface?
Any information you can provide will be greatly appreciated.

Well, we've used ODBC from a windows machine and it works but most of the
stuff is run locally on the server from a web interface.

Anyway, you may be interested in this:

http://www.pgsql.com/user_gallery/

Apparently the largest listed project is over 1800 GB but that could be a
typo :)

HTH,

--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org>
http://svana.org/kleptog/

On Fri, 2002-02-15 at 09:08, Corey W. Gibbs wrote:

What's the application? How big are your
databases? Are you using Visual Basic or C to connect to it through ODBC
or are you using a Web interface?

My company is using postgres in several related applications in retail
point of sale and inventory management.

Our point of sale system, OpenCheckout, uses postgres as its backend.
The size of the databases varies according to the retail install, but
for a recent trade show demo we loaded up a craft and hobby industry
database of UPC codes and item information that contained about 800,000
items. With that size database, random lookups on an indexed field
(the UPC code) were reasonably quick. We haven't extensively tested
with large numbers of users but our early results are positive.

We are also using postgres as a server for a fixed asset tracking system
we are working on. Inventory management and computer service people
with wireless handhelds (compaq ipaqs running Linux) connect to a
postgres server to get network configuration, service history, and
hardware information from computers, switches, and even network jack
plates keyed on a barcoded property tag. The user just scans the tag
with the integrated barcode scanner and can view or edit lots of
different kinds of information.

And we use the same handheld system to interface to our point of sale
inventory database, for receiving people in the warehouse to scan
incoming items into the database or for reordering people wandering the
aisles of the store. Postgres lets us tie all this together pretty
easily.

Sad to say :) we use SQLite when we have to go off the network and
operate disconnected with the handheld units. The ipaq just doesn't
have enough horsepower and storage space (32M of non-volatile storage,
64M RAM) to run postgres locally plus all our software. We keep an
audit trail table and replay it when we can get wireless access to the
postgres server again.

We access the database in a variety of ways. Most of our tools are
written in Scheme and use a Scheme wrapper for the libpq libraries. For
the accounting components we use a middleware layer based on the
'gnucash' accounting engine, which provides a uniform financial
transaction API. The actual POS front end is written in Java (so it can
use the JavaPOS point of sale hardware driver standard) and gets many of
its configuration parameters from the same database using JDBC.

Hope this helps
Bill Gribble

[snip]

I am not trying to start a ruckus or a flamewar, but I would like to
know who's using Postgres out there.

[snap]

<ruckus>

We use it at the small consulting company I work for to track time billed to
jobs. The current front end is in Access97 with the backend in PG 7.1.3 (7
tables). I developed it partway in 100% Access and transferred my tables to
a PG backend before I deployed it. Tastes great, less filling. Never had a
stability problem. I am currently working on a more feature-full version
with PG 7.2 on the back and PHP web forms on the front (25+ tables). Access
(+ VBA) is like a lot of Microsoft products: they make easy things easy and
slightly hard things darn near impossible. I like a lot of abstraction on
top of my DB, so Access wasn't cutting it. If the way you store it very
similar to the way you see it though (and you don't mind the licensing)
Access is pretty nice. Not for the backend though. You (and probably
everybody else here) already know, but it bears repeating: Access is not a
good multi-user database backend.

</ruckus>

Neal Lindsay

On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Corey W. Gibbs wrote:

any other server." "Opensource software isn't going any where." "Can we
depend on it?" are common questions and statements I have heard.

Can we depend on it? That is the silliest question ever, baut hardly
anyone seeh to know why.

The important thing about software "in production" is not the price.
There is nothing wrong paying good money for good software. But software
that comes without source code is no good software. Why? Because the
manufacturer drops support for every version withing a few years. And
then you have software running that no-one can support.

You could say: "OK, so we spend a lot of money every year again and
upgrade to the latest version. We accept even the downtime." Yes, if you
are lucky. But the manufacturer will finally merge with a competitor or
simply vanish. Bang!

I am not trying to start a ruckus or a flamewar, but I would like to know
who's using Postgres out there. What's the application? How big are your
databases? Are you using Visual Basic or C to connect to it through ODBC
or are you using a Web interface?

We use PostgreSQL as a database for web servers: raw data to generate
network statistics from (about 160.000 rows, growing) and user databases
for access privileges. I am very happy that I found mod_auth_pgsql, so
PostgreSQL tables can be used with .htaccess. Great!

Many people use MySQL for these purposes (and it's OK for simple
applications). But why use a lightweight database if I can enjoy
transactions, triggers and so on with the full-function PostgreSQL?

--
PGP/GPG Key-ID:
http://blackhole.pca.dfn.de:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&amp;search=0xB5A1AFE1

For what it's worth:

Our company runs MobyGames (http://www.mobygames.com) a project similar
to IMDB, but for video and computer games. We exclusively use
postgres. We've been using it since december of 1998 (pg6.5.3) and have
been very happy with it. The database is relatively small, around 1.5GB
in about 200 tables. All of our pages are dynamically created, and we
serve up about 1,000,000 pages a day (each page usually causes at least
20-30 queries against the database.). Most of the database activity is
select queries, there is only about 0.5MB - 1.0MB of additional content
added a day. The database runs on a single box and has performed well.
When there have been problems with postgres, the developers have been
very proactive about finding a solution, and the problems have always
been resolved within a day or two. From extensive past experience with
both Oracle and Sybase, I can say that's great.

--brian hirt

--- "Corey W. Gibbs" <cgibbs@westmarkproducts.com>
wrote:

Good Morning Everyone,

<snip>

I would like to know
who's using Postgres out there. What's the
application? How big are your
databases? Are you using Visual Basic or C to
connect to it through ODBC
or are you using a Web interface?
Any information you can provide will be greatly
appreciated.
thank you
Corey W. Gibbs

My office performs financial and clinical data
analysis to find opportunities to improve operations
and the quality of patient care. We used PostgreSQL
7.1.3 on FreeBSD to create a relational data model
version of most of our Decision Support System and
integrated data from additional data sources. We also
have data for all inpatients discharged from nonrural
hospitals in Texas during 1999 and 2000. We use the
state data to derive benchmarks; and apply the
benchmarks to internal data. The database for
internal data is currently 3GB. The database for the
state data in 14GB.

I am currently preparing to move the data from several
MS Access database applications to PostgreSQL
databases. The users will never know anything
changed.

Since the hospital is mostly a Windows shop; we use MS
Access 97 and 2000 as front-ends via ODBC drivers.

I have setup phpPgAdmin (Apache web server with PHP4)
so that I can answer simple questions from any
executive's office in the system.

I have a Python script that obtains a current list of
PostgreSQL databases. It renames existing .gz dump
files to .gz.old. It then vacuums all databases and
uses pg_dump and gzip to back them up into individual
.gz files. The script is run by cron to ensure that
even new databases are backed up automatically on a
weekly basis.

Andrew Gould

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Got something to say? Say it better with Yahoo! Video Mail
http://mail.yahoo.com

It would be great to archive this thread and link to it from the web
page...

-Doug
--
Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.
--T. J. Jackson, 1863

Since I've posted a number of times to this list, it's no big secret
that www.iboats.com is powered by Postgres. It's been rock-solid for us,
and served us very well. Our data directory is about 1.5 gigs in size,
spread out over a few hundred tables, some very small, some very large.
We do all of our programming in Perl. Investers have never heard of
Postgres, and sometimes mention getting Oracle, so we tell them "Terrific,
if you want us to get Oracle, we can do that. We'll just need an extra
half-million dollars to do it with." Reality then slaps them in the
face.....

steve

I'm currently evaluating PostgreSQL for our enterprise. Does anyone know of
any white paper or study that compares Postgres to other open source and
commercial RDBMSs?

Thanks,
Mathew

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Wolfe [mailto:steve@iboats.com]
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2002 2:20 PM
To: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Question: Who's Using Postgres

Since I've posted a number of times to this list, it's no big secret
that www.iboats.com is powered by Postgres. It's been rock-solid for us,
and served us very well. Our data directory is about 1.5 gigs in size,
spread out over a few hundred tables, some very small, some very large.
We do all of our programming in Perl. Investers have never heard of
Postgres, and sometimes mention getting Oracle, so we tell them "Terrific,
if you want us to get Oracle, we can do that. We'll just need an extra
half-million dollars to do it with." Reality then slaps them in the
face.....

steve

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http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html

I am not trying to start a ruckus or a flamewar, but I would like to know
who's using Postgres out there. What's the application? How big are your
databases? Are you using Visual Basic or C to connect to it through ODBC
or are you using a Web interface?

I don't have huge databases by any means, but I really get a lot out of
postgresql's advanced features. I have used postgres from perl, php, python,
and C (C really only to test, I haven't made any major applications with
C/postgres). Some apps are web-interface and some are assorted other
interfaces. I like the way postgres handles things like triggers, sequences,
and stored procedures; the way those features work make it very easy to
organize your data very effectively (I don't find myself hacking around any
database limitations).

I mostly run a lot of smaller databases. I have tested with larger databases
and weird data (like inserting 20+ MB of data into one attribute of one
record with one query) and postgres doesn't run into any problems. I also
expect that I will be making some moderate-sized databases (couple hundred
MB) in the near future, for which I will depend on postgres (with little
doubt).

I don't know what network problems you were refering to, but postgres should
work fine unless you have very little bandwidth. For how much data are these
applications asking? Usually my applications only ask for small amounts of
data from a larger data set. After all, 15 users against a 50MB database
doesn't sound like heavy load from a networking standpoint or a hardware
standpoint.

Regards,
Jeff

I switched over from mysql over a year ago, and have no plans to go back.

A couple of sites I've built with it:

www.bravekids.org (large resource directory, just about everything is dynamic)

www.citynews.com (searching and administrative functions)

I use it with PHP and/or Perl, and Apache. I've also used it on some
smaller site, under Free BSD and Linux. I've been pleased with
performance, ease of use, maintenance, scalability, and adherence to SQL
standards. I'm more of a backend developer than an SQL expert, but my SQL
guru buddies tell me the migration path to Oracle and other large databases
is much easier with Postgres than with other open source products.

Also include the cost of rebooting the NT once a month.

My experience was more like every time you change *anything*. <grin>

Even though I've been running linux instead of NT for a couple of years, I
still have a reflexive urge to reboot whenever I install anything new or
change an OS parameter.

-Nick

And tell them that you can not run more than one instance of MS SQL on a
box. So if at one point, you guys need a development database, you got

to buy

another box.

A lot of us would never put development and production servers on the
same machine anyway! ; )

steve

rofl,
that was my plan to piece all of these together in a nice formatted report :). let me know who i send it to so it can be put on a site.
thank you
Corey

-----Original Message-----
From: Medi Montaseri [SMTP:medi@cybershell.com]
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2002 2:20 PM
To: Doug McNaught
Cc: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Question: Who's Using Postgres

I second that....these are all excellent credentials...
I propse we deligate this to the person who asked this question. ie as
a way of sharing this, he can gather all the reports and then post a
summary.
In fact he can sell that very report to his organization.

Doug McNaught wrote:

It would be great to archive this thread and link to it from the web
page...

-Doug
--
Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.
--T. J. Jackson, 1863

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-------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Unix Distributed Systems Engineer HTTP://www.CyberShell.com
CyberShell Engineering
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On Fri, 2002-02-15 at 15:43, Jeff Davis wrote:

I don't know what network problems you were refering to, but postgres should
work fine unless you have very little bandwidth. For how much data are these
applications asking? Usually my applications only ask for small amounts of
data from a larger data set. After all, 15 users against a 50MB database
doesn't sound like heavy load from a networking standpoint or a hardware
standpoint.

Regards,
Jeff

You haven't used Access, have you? 15 users on Access is playing with
fire. I created a system several years ago for tracking costs for FEMA
reimbursement. We put it on Access because I didn't have much time to
develop it and there would be no more than five users of it. It turned
out that we had over 30 users wanting to enter data after a hurricane
blew through town. Once we got over 10 users on it at once, it basically
came to a stop. I had to come up with a schedule for the users to add
their data. I wouldn't allow more than 5 users at a time.

Access is a pretty good little database for a single user or a small
group but thats it.

Jeff

--
Jeff Self
Information Technology Analyst
Department of Personnel
City of Newport News
2400 Washington Ave.
Newport News, VA 23607
757-926-6930

And tell them that you can not run more than one instance of MS SQL on a
box. So if at one point, you guys need a development database, you got to buy
another box.

Also tell them that MS is one the most SQL non compliant vendors.

Also tell them that NT runs its TCP/IP stack in user land, and
as such, the process is not guranteed to be switched to just because
an ethernet frame came up the stack and said, I'd like to connect to the
database. When TCP/IP is in the kernel, at least it makes up thru the TCP/IP
stack. The bottom line. You'll get no-connections once in a while.

Also tell them that If your database, or problem statement, or skill sets
grow beyond NT and decide to install a Sun box. Then forget about the MS SQL.

Also include the cost of rebooting the NT once a month.

Oh include the cost of a monitor as well. Cause NT boxes don't function much
without a monitor. Linux or Unix can be remotely managed headless.

Jeff Self wrote:

I understand where you are coming from. I worked for a city government
up until a year ago. I built our intranet using Linux on a discarded
server with apache and postgreSQL. But they didn't care about the fact
that is was free. They wanted all data to be stored on the mainframe. I
got tired of the scene and I left to join Great Bridge. We know the rest
of this story.

I'm now back in city government, although with a different city. They
are much more open to creativity here and are allowing me to develop on
Linux running postgreSQL. I'm in the process of developing a Job
Information System for our Personnel department, whom I work directly
for, that will use Apache, PostgreSQL, JSP's, and some Perl. So I'm a
happy camper now.

Put together a proposal for them. In one column, list the costs for
installing PostgreSQL on your existing Linux servers. In the other
column, list the cost of a server running Windows XP/2000 with MS SQL
server. Don't forget to include the cost of licenses for all 15 users
and. Also throw in Visual Studio .net which was just announced the other
day. I believe its around $1000 per user. Let them decide.

On Fri, 2002-02-15 at 10:08, Corey W. Gibbs wrote:

Good Morning Everyone,
I have a general question about who is using Postgresql. This is not a
marketing survey and any information I collect will only be used by me.
Here's the background.
I have a user who has developed a Visual Basic application that uses MS
Access files for it's data storage. Currently, this datafile is about
fifty megs in size. There are about fifteen users who use these files in
the application, needless to say, this is having a severe impact on our
network. After much heartache and pain, I was able to convince him that we
need to look at a RDBMS to put the data on. Of course, I suggested
Postgres as an alternative to MS SQL server for many reasons. Linux runs
on all of my servers, I'm happy with it's performance and reliability. I'm
currently running Postgres as my web server's backend. Opensource software
does not scare me. However, his side of the camp comes from the Windows
world. "It has to be MS SQL server. It'll be easier to program to than
any other server." "Opensource software isn't going any where." "Can we
depend on it?" are common questions and statements I have heard.
I am not trying to start a ruckus or a flamewar, but I would like to know
who's using Postgres out there. What's the application? How big are your
databases? Are you using Visual Basic or C to connect to it through ODBC
or are you using a Web interface?
Any information you can provide will be greatly appreciated.
thank you
Corey W. Gibbs

---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
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--
Jeff Self
Information Technology Analyst
Department of Personnel
City of Newport News
2400 Washington Ave.
Newport News, VA 23607
757-926-6930

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--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Medi Montaseri medi@CyberShell.com
Unix Distributed Systems Engineer HTTP://www.CyberShell.com
CyberShell Engineering
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

On 15 Feb 2002 at 7:08, Corey W. Gibbs wrote:

I have a general question about who is using Postgresql. This is not

I'm doing work for an educational institution here in the west of
Ireland, for whom I've developed a number of web applications of
varying scale and complexity. The web server is a windows machine
(we've just upgraded from NT4 to 2000) from which COM objects and ASP
script talk via ODBC to a Linux machine running PostgreSQL.

I'm also currently developing an application for a language school;
this is written in Delphi and runs on Windows client machines from
which, again, it talks via ODBC to a Linux server running PostgreSQL.

--Ray.

---------------------------------------------------------
Raymond O'Donnell http://www.iol.ie/~rod/organ
rod@iol.ie The Irish Pipe Organ Page
---------------------------------------------------------

I second that....these are all excellent credentials...
I propse we deligate this to the person who asked this question. ie as
a way of sharing this, he can gather all the reports and then post a
summary.
In fact he can sell that very report to his organization.

Doug McNaught wrote:

It would be great to archive this thread and link to it from the web
page...

-Doug
--
Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.
--T. J. Jackson, 1863

---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command
(send "unregister YourEmailAddressHere" to majordomo@postgresql.org)

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Medi Montaseri medi@CyberShell.com
Unix Distributed Systems Engineer HTTP://www.CyberShell.com
CyberShell Engineering
-------------------------------------------------------------------------