Re: Data Storage Issue (Basic Issue)

Wayne wrote:
(a bunch of really cogent stuff)

I just have one tiny nit to pick.

> Different types of filesystems work better with DBs than
> others.  Using any FAT filesystem for a serious DB will cause
> poor performance.  Using something like JFS or ext2 can
> improve performance at the cost of safety (not all writes are
> journaled).

 From what I've been reading and hearing from DBAs (disclaimer: I am but a

lowly programmer myself, not a DBA), journaling file syatems are not the
key 
to safety in big-iron DMBSes like PostgreSQL and Oracle.  The key is to
turn 
on 'sync', i.e., make sure there is no write-behind cache, or else for 
performance use battery-backed-up RAID controllers, so that all writes
reach 
the disk before claiming to the DBMS that they are written.

The transaction logs for the DBMS itself provide the journaling, as
mentioned 
by Wayne:

> Using a journaling filesystem or RAID-1 (or similar) works
> best for DBs that don't do that internally anyway (but most do).

If you are in a scenario where these issues make a difference, you had
best be 
using one of the DBMSes that has engineered solutions to these things. 
Also, 
as Wayne ably mentioned. there are a Nawful lot of parameters to tune to
make 
a database sing.  DB administration is of the Dark Arts.

-- 
Lew