Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!accuvax.nwu.edu!tank!staff_bob@gsbacd.uchicago.edu
From: staff_bob@gsbacd.uchicago.edu
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Major data corruption in INGRES
Message-ID: <2565@tank.uchicago.edu>
Date: 31 Mar 89 22:04:03 GMT
Sender: news@tank.uchicago.edu
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Chicago Graduate School of Business
Lines: 22

> 
>     For the last 1.5 years we have been having problems with the
>reliability of the INGRES (rti, commercial) rdbms system.  The
>symptoms we have been experiencing are major corruption of the
>"backend" "system" tables and also corruption of index pages in
>btree table structures.  
> 
For what little this is worth, we've had very little trouble with Ingres
data integrity. I've seen a couple of cases of corrupt BTREES (symptom:
inconsistant query results), and the best RTI could do was show us how
to fix them. No one was ever able to identify when and how they occurred.
We've never had any corruption of any of our system tables, to my knowledge.
All this in a VMS cluster, primarily running VMS Version 4.7.

I seem to recall some comment to the effect that 'we do see these BTREE
problems occassionally, but we haven't been able to figure out what's
causing them'. At any rate, that is obviuosly true. I would venture to say
that if your site has this problem repeatedly, RTI should be very interested
in using your site to isolate the problem. Try going up the Tech Support
ladder a couple of notches...

R.Kohout