Re: Unsupported 3rd-party solutions (Was: Few questions on postgresql (dblink, 2pc, clustering))

On Sunday 22 August 2004 16:45, you wrote:
> Jim Worke wrote:
> > I don't mean to be rude or anything, but having 3rd-party solution is a
> > scary option for a business enterprise.  I know that they're stable and
> > all, but if it's not supported by PostgreSQL themselves (i.e. included in
> > PostgreSQL as a whole package), we're afraid that we have to change our
> > code/design in case the product has stopped progress.
> >
> > For example, pgcluster's patch is for PostgreSQL 7.3.6.  It's not in sync
> > with PostgreSQL's current version (I'm not blaming the guy... He's
> > created a very good solution and I'm thankful for that).  It's just that
> > for my company (and I guess many other companies too), it's more
> > appealing to have a database solution that comes in a package.
>
> Those are very interesting remarks. I'm the author of PL/Java, a module
> that also could be thought of as "not supported by PostgreSQL
> themselves", and I've made the same reflection as you have. It would be
> beneficial to have some organisational entity within Postgres where this
> issue could be addressed (i.e. packaging/synchronization and supported
> configurations). I think it could give a real boost to PostgreSQL as such.
>
> Sure, an open source community does not make support commitments. But
> the PostgreSQL community is large and that creates (a sense of) safety
> and continuity. This sense is not automatically transferred to the
> "3rd-party solutions".
>
>  From a users perspective and perhaps especially from the decision
> makers perspective, the fact that you have to download various modules
> from gborg etc. is indeed scary. Who will support your chosen solution a
> year from now? IMHO, if PosgreSQL is aiming for larger business
> acceptance, this has to be resolved. Contributors like myself must be
> given the opportunity to get things "verified" and checked in as
> "supported". It would do PostgreSQL an awful lot of good if there where
> supported configurations including replication, server side language
> support (Perl, Tcl, Java, etc.), JDBC and ODCB drivers, and other things
> that you'd normally find in commercial enterprise solutions.

I'm CC'ing this to the postgresql mailing list.

I fully agree to your statement (to get things "verified" and checked in as
"supported").  Hopefully there's a way out for this...