Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!att!rutgers!ub!canisius!pavlov From: pavlov@canisius.UUCP (Greg Pavlov) Newsgroups: comp.databases Subject: Re: status of Ingres Message-ID: <2992@canisius.UUCP> Date: 4 Nov 90 20:21:47 GMT References: <2987@canisius.UUCP> Organization: Canisius College, Buffalo N.Y. 14208 Lines: 54 In article , pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes: > > Because you have chosen the wrong platforms. Sorry about saying that. > DEC 5000, 58000, etc... systems are running essentially ALPHA or BETA > system software (4.0 is still quite loose), compilers (although 2.1 > seems to be less buggy than previous releases), and hardware (the > processor boards seem to be fairly buggy). In other words they are as > full of holes as emmenthal. > Do YOU actually use one of these systems every day or is this another one of those rumors you are so fond of cluttering up comp.arch with ? We run a variety of applications, from simple to complex, for a rather large number of people. We do not have problems with the stability of anything but INGRES. Our systems and other applications crash rarely; INGRES crashes daily. > Let me say that you have been somewhat unwise to become the guinea pigs > for DEC in runnning a major database application as a test of their > newly released systems. In November of last year, INGRES sold us licenses for DEC RISC machines. It also demands and receives annual maintenance fees. There was no mention of the product being so unstable that we need to have a programmer stand by round the clock to recover from and clean up after server crashes. If we are, indeed, guinea pigs, it is for INGRES's benefit, not DEC's. But I do not think that the termo "guinea pig" is appropriate, since that infers that someone is conducting an experiment to gain knowledge and use it for some useful purpose. To the best of our knowledge, INGRES is simply ignoring the problems and pretending that they do not exist. (On another note: I have received messages from other sites, running other hardware platforms, reporting many variations of the same problems. I thank you for taking the time to write; it made us feel better [at your expense], in that the suspicion that we are somehow botching this up was dissipated. I also received a message from a "senior" member of the INGRES user group who told me that, unlike several other platforms, ULTRIX is not one that is known to be a "problem platform". Given our experiences, I offer my condol- ences to those attempting to work with the "problem platforms": it's hard to imagine what working with those must be like). > > Don't bad mouth Ingres, which may or may not deserve it, > without considering the other, more obvious, possibilities. I have worked on approximately 12 different computer platforms over the past eighteen years and have worked with at least half a dozen data managers and DBMS's for the past 14. I considered more possibilities than you are aware of before posting my message. greg pavlov, fstrf, amherst, ny pavlov@stewart.fstrf.org