[Solar-general] oxford

[Diego Saravia]

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/applications/0,39020384,39173013,00.htm


las bases que usamos para expedientes, lugares, organizaciones, etc. en la
UNSa, (ekeko,mojotoro) tambien usan perl

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Wednesday 8th December 2004

Oxford University's computer centre embraces PostgreSQL
Ingrid Marson
ZDNet UK
November 09, 2004, 15:38 GMT
	
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The main computing centre at Oxford University has announced plans to drop its
last commercial database and to move entirely to open-source database software

Oxford University Computing Services (OUCS), which provides services to staff
and students around the university, will complete its move to open-source
PostgreSQL as the back-end database for most of its systems over the next year.
	
Ray Miller, the systems development and support manager at OUCS, told ZDNet UK
that the OUCS has been using PostgreSQL since 1998 and has at least eight
PostgreSQL databases. At present it is running PostgreSQL 7.2 on Debian, the
free Linux distribution. The OUCS uses Ingres as the back-end of a user
registration system, but is due to migrate this to PostgreSQL in the next 12
to 18 months, said Miller.

The main delay in migrating to PostgreSQL is because of a user management
application which is dependant on Ingres. Once this is rewritten the move
should be straightforward, according to Miller. "Developers have been working
for the last sixth months migrating the [user management] tools to Perl," said
Miller. "It should be quite simple to move to PostgreSQL once this is done."

One of biggest uses of PostgreSQL at OUCS is to store data about users for the
University's main email system, which currently has around 32,000 active
users, said Miller. The email system, which runs off a Perl-based mail server
written in-house, known as Webmail, was one of the first systems at OUCS to
use the open-source database, and grew from an initial user base of 5,000 to
its current level.

PostgreSQL has also been chosen to run as the back-end of an email-forwarding
service for Oxford University alumni, which went live this summer, said
Miller. The service allows graduates to forward emails from a university
account to any other email address, allowing them to keep the same email
address for life.

This service has been offered to this year's graduates, and the OUCS hopes to
eventually add historical data so that graduates from previous years can also
use this service.

"The system will grow very big," said Miller, "PostgreSQL will eventually
store data on tens, if not hundreds of thousands of ex-students."

PostgreSQL is also used as the back-end for other systems including a virtual
learning environment, a Web-based portal, a course-booking system that allows
students to select OUCS courses, and an IT helpdesk system, which has already
processed 600,000 helpdesk tickets, according to Miller.

Miller said the choice of open-source rather than proprietary software was not
just a matter of cost -- the large community of developers willing to provide
support and the ability to access the source code were also an important
deciding factor.

"We have definitely saved money, but I couldn't put a figure on it," said
Miller. "A commercial database wasn't something we considered. We prefer
working with the open-source community -- the support is excellent and you can
modify the code."

Open-source software has sometimes been criticised for being difficult to use,
but Miller said PostgreSQL is easier to use than Ingres -- the commercial
database produced by Computer Associates that was recently open-sourced --
which is the only commercial database in use at the computing centre.

"PostgreSQL works out of box -- the administration overhead is very small,"
said Miller. "It is easier to set up and administrate than Ingres."

The computing centre did not just make a choice of open-source over
proprietary, but also had to choose between the two popular open-source
databases, MySQL and PostgreSQL, But Miller claims that this was a simple
choice. "When we first started using PostgreSQL it is was the only open-source
database that was fully featured," said Miller.

Miller said MySQL has become more feature-rich in the past few years, but
claimed it is still lagging behind PostgreSQL. This may change in the future
as Brian Aker, director of architecture at MySQL, told ZDNet UK two weeks ago
that MySQL will be reaching parity with commercial databases in its next release.

The only additional feature which Miller said is needed in PostgreSQL is a
recommended or integrated replication tool. OUCS is currently running numerous
PostgreSQL databases off one server, and would like to implement a replication
tool in case the primary server fails. Miller said there are various
replication tools available for PostgreSQL including eRServer and Slony-I, but
he has not yet evaluated which one he will use.

Simon Riggs, a developer on PostgreSQL, said that he was not sure whether
PostgreSQL would provide a recommended version, as there are a few competing
versions available, of which Slony-I is his choice. "I, personally, would
choose to use Slony-I as it appears to have the greatest community support."

Although OUCS is a heavy-user of PostgreSQL, Miller says that in many other
university departments, administrators are paying consultants "large amounts
of money" to use proprietary database solutions, such as Oracle.


-- 
Diego Saravia 
dsa en unsa.edu.ar