Re: Possible causes for database corruption and solutions

On 16/12/2009 9:07 AM, Scott Marlowe wrote:

> I'd also recommend moving off of OSX as you're using a minority OS as
> far as databases are concerned, and you won't have a very large
> community to help out when things do go wrong.

It sounds like PostgreSQL is being used as a DB bundled with an app -
not quite embedded, but as close as Pg gets. Right, OP?

If so, they wouldn't be moving off Mac OS X, they'd be moving off Pg.

While Pg doesn't seem to be hugely used on Mac OS X as a production
environment for running dedicated database servers, it should still work
safely and with acceptable performance. If it doesn't then good problem
reports will help improve that. So I for one encourage them to stick
with Pg and stay in touch on the list. They shouldn't have issues now
that they've got OS X honouring fsync, and if they do then it'd be good
to hear about it. I'll be happy to help out if I can - I don't use Pg on
OS X, but I do have access to OS X machines and have to administrate
them on the network at work, so I can do testing if I need to.

Just because Pg isn't targeted at app embedding doesn't mean it
shouldn't work well on a mostly end-user platform when shipped with an
application. If the app installer is prepared to put up with the fuss of
setting up Pg on the machine, it should be able to (and can) reasonably
expect it to work.

For what its worth, there are clearly a fair few Mac OS X users of Pg
out there - especially dev setups on Mac laptops. They turn up on the
lists sometimes, and the things they ask about don't suggest to me that
Mac OS X is a particularly untrustworthy platform for running Pg on.

--
Craig Ringer