On Wed, Feb 21, 2001 at 04:29:21PM -0800, Michael A. Olson wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm Mike Olson. I work at Sleepycat Software. We develop,
> distribute, and support Berkeley DB.
Hi Mike!
> I came across this excerpt on your Web site, and wanted to
> follow up with you about it:
>
> SQL Back-End
>
> The Subversion filesystem will probably use Berkeley DB to store
> data on disk; however, a real SQL database provides much more
> reliable transactions. Someone can rewrite the filesystem back-end
> to speak SQL.
>
> Needless to say, we disagree pretty strongly about the reliable
> transactions statement.
I wouldn't take it too strongly. I'm not sure who or when it was written,
but we're quite happy with using Berkeley DB and plan to ship Subversion
with only BDB support. A future release will enable a pluggable database
backend, but it certainly isn't our top priority.
I'd agree that the statement is improper. The only real advantage that I
know SQL has over BDB is its relational query support.
>...
> I don't think
> that a relational client/server system would be more reliable,
Agreed.
> but I'm certain that it would be slower.
Not sure that I agree with the generalization, but it *is* generally true :-)
> Have you had problems with Berkeley DB that led you to make that
> statement? If there's a problem, we'd like to know more so that
> we can help you fix it.
None at all. As I said, I'm not sure when/where the statement came from, but
it is entirely possible that somebody unfamiliar with available database
technology wrote it.
As a sign of good faith :-), I've updated the documentation (in CVS). It
doesn't appear to automatically propagate to the web site, but Karl can see
that it happens.
> If you're in deployment now with Berkeley DB in Milestone 1, we'd
> like to include you on our open source partners page. We've
> recently redesigned the Web site, and will put up a new page in
> the next few weeks that lists the open source projects that rely
> on Berkeley DB. We'd be glad to have Subversion on that list,
> if you're willing.
Berkeley DB isn't used in M1, but will appear in M2. We don't have a current
date for that, but I'd say sometime in March. As I mentioned before, it is
more than just M1... we plan to ship it that way. We currently require at
least 3.1.14, but I imagine that we'd want to upgrade that to your 3.2
releases before our final release.
Karl Fogel and Brian Behlendorf are the "official" guys who can state our
willingness to be on your partners page. Personally speaking, I'd love for
Subversion to be there!
> Please do let me know about the reliability issue.
We have none. An oversight, which has been corrected.
Cheers,
-g
--
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/
Received on Sat Oct 21 14:36:23 2006