Re: PostgreSQL vs MySQL

Clinging to sanity, dan@langille.org (Dan Langille) mumbled into her beard:
> On Thu, 20 May 2004, Josh Berkus wrote:
>> Dan, Robert
>> > This is an issue frequently raised with Bacula (http://www.bacula.org/).
>> > How do I backup my 20GB database if I have only 1GB free diskspace?
>> > Bacula can use a FIFO, although I've never used it myself.
>>
>> My answer to this would be "stop being such a cheapskate and spend $150 on
>> another HDD, darn it!"
>
> Umm, I was using small numbers to prove a point.  Change GB to TB if
> you want.  For some places, it's a realy issue.  There is no disk
> space to dump.

The principle still fits.

Dumps, particularly if compressed, are WAY smaller than the database.
If there's a fair bit of text being stored, I'd find a 10:1
compression ratio quite easy to believe.

If your filesystems are consistently more than 90% full, therefore
meaning dumping isn't possible, then you're aiming to suffer from all
the sorts of pathologies that take place when filesystems get very
nearly full.  Some filesystems may play a little better than others
(doubtless ext2, BFFS, MS-FAT, and HPFS all behave a bit differently),
but when they're doing a lot of work looking for the little bit of
free space that's left, performance is certain to suffer.
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