Good point about the cost for other projects... As I mentioned before, Borland Interbase is another open-source alternative - it has more in common with commercial RDBMS's than MySQL for sure! I have used this software and been impressed... Given the reliability of MySQL recently, it should be worth a review at least?

Ned - I was refering to the photo's on the Seti website - have a look at this kit!!! Ovbiously not refering to their new server... ;o))))

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/photos/index.html

Re. Space and AC etc. If you run one powerful server instead of three outdated servers, you would save space, power and AC! Economies of scale...

Bottom line is, we are used to a reliability standard set by the corp's, and therefore we want to expect that level from BOINC, as it is a multi-project high-profile high-value truely global scientific research platform. Given the historical significance of this work, (and as it is the ethos of open-source software) we should all feel responsibility to use our particular skillsets to improve all aspects of the project whenever we can!

---

> What I was suggesting was a "Hardware Donation Drive" where all money received
> is spent on new tin... Buy a proper DB license and get this project on some
> professional hardware, and not just what is rescued out of corporate rubbish
> skips!

I seriously doubt the new database server (Sun V40z) came out of a dumpster.

... and I keep reading that what SETI really needs is space, and power, and A/C.

When Classic ends, that will free up space, and power, and cooling. There will be more hardware available and some of the Classic hardware can be used for things like replica databases.

---

> > Mysql is free.
> >
> > - Matt
> >
>
> Hi Matt,
>
> Yep - thats true... So is Borland's Interbase... it's open-source and
> probably a more reliable RDBMS...
>
> http://www.borland.com/interbase/index.html
>
> Secondly, given that BOINC has such a massive tech following, pretty much
> anything you asked for would be provided free... including MSSQL or Oracle
> licenses. Thinking a little outside the box, there are lots of guru status
> techies out there who could also help out - 1 week SETI holidays @ berkeley
> for example! LOL ;o))))
>
> According to the Status page, you currently have 6 machines connecting to the
> DB server? So a 25-user license would cover your needs for todays setup?
>
> With a microsoft setup (sorry, my knowledge area) you would licenses for
> Win2003 and SQL Server. This might cost retail around US$5000.00. If you
> were to ask all the people who were upset, annoyed or angered with the
> reliability of the infrastructure over the last couple of months to send in
> $1.00, you would have the money in no time...
>
> Continuing, seting up and running a proper Hardware Donation Drive (all users
> donate 5 bucks) would probably net you enough $$$ to replace all your machines
> with opterons...
>
> Guys - you just have to ask!!!!! We, the crazy seti community, would help!
>
> Cheers, Swissnic

We need to be careful about using the term "SETI" and "BOINC" as if they were interchangable.

If BOINC required Oracle (and it was donated to SETI) then CPDN would have to get Oracle, and Predictor would have to get Oracle, and LHC would have to get Oracle, and Einstein would have to get Oracle.

Take LHC as an example. They turned up LHC@home on a shoestring: some old machines for servers and a bunch of free software. It worked incredibly well so they are buying new hardware and dedicating resources.

They could probably get budget for Oracle, but if they had to buy an Oracle license to start, well, they probably wouldn't have.

---

> Hi Ned,
>
> Its to do with the way MySQL and Oracle (or most other SQL DB's) work.

[perfectly good explanation deleted to save space]

> Sorry for the crap explaination. but you hopefulyl see what I mean!

Your explanation was just fine, and I do understand transactions and journaling and all of that.

At the same time, I would not make a practice of jerking the plug out of the wall even if I had a tremendous amount of faith in Oracle.

A big part of the BOINC project is to use open source tools that are freely available as much as possible, so that other projects can start up without having to beg for commercial software.

---

> The issue isn't so much the cost for Berkeley... as much as the cost for
> everybody else if they rewrote Boinc to use another database back end.
>
> Boinc is meant to be something that can be implemented by anybody.... if it
> requires Oracle, the number of people able to afford to run a small boinc
> project just took a nose dive.
>
>

Disclaimer: I have not really delved into how BOINC is built, other than a cursory review. That said, I dont think that the BOINC front end has any clue as to what database is being used on the back-end, so IMO the client would not have to undergo any changes whatever. It really comes down to what interface is being used between the back-end server that provides the application communications layer, and MySQL. Although it would be some work to change it, I certainly believe it could be done, and it would not be that hard.

SwissNic was correct in his explanation of transaction logs, although each major RDBMS vendor does it differently. If you build the server/database correctly, you can yank the power from the box anytime, and when you bring the system back up, Oracle will fix itself, assuming that there are no hardware issues. No more poring over each table checking for logical or database corruption, no more restoring/rebuilding from a data export: the database checks itself out and brings you back to the point of failure. You -might- have to enter in a few commands to start the recovery manually if things are really bad, but that takes maybe 5 minutes. Obviously, this should also be coupled with either Veritas for a robust journaling file system, or perhaps raw devices (yuk :( ) for the Oracle DB.

I bet if a carefully worded request was sent to Oracle, they would donate the product, maybe even donate some expertise to help with the conversion. Heck, if I could get some assurance that the team would actually USE the product, I would make the request myself. But my fear is that it would become shelfware. The other thing is that when these guys are filling out a resume, I am not going to knock having MySQL on it, but having Oracle database (i.e. DBA or developer) is certainly more lucrative in the long run. So it would be silly to reject a donation in this form for many reasons.

Certainly I like the Oracle database products, but even MS SQL Server, Sybase or IBM's DB2 would be a good fit. What is needed is something that has good performance, reliability and recovery capabilities. Tools that provide those capabilities are expensive: IIRC Oracle is $40k PER CPU list price. I do know that Oracle provides a migration tool that can convert a MySQL database to Oracle (called Migration Workbench, and its free).

This downtime would be unacceptable in a commercial environment, and with perhaps..what...500k users? ..this downtime is certainly noticed across the world.

---

> UHHHH...they have been asking!

I am aware of this... but it doesn't have much relevance to THIS discussion. Did you read the page???

A quote from the donation page...

"How your donation is spent:

Most of our budget goes to pay the salaries of students and staff members. Other expenses include travel to Arecibo and conferences, network bandwidth, hardware maintenance, and one-time purchases like the air conditioner in our machine room. Almost none of our budget is spent on hardware (desktop and server computers, disks, tapes, telescope electronics etc.); these items have been generously donated by corporate sponsors. "

Now, how is a donation to this supposed to help the stability of the infrastructure when it says "Almost none of our budget is spent on hardware"!!!!!

What I was suggesting was a "Hardware Donation Drive" where all money received is spent on new tin... Buy a proper DB license and get this project on some professional hardware, and not just what is rescued out of corporate rubbish skips!

Cheers, Swissnic.

---

The issue isn't so much the cost for Berkeley... as much as the cost for everybody else if they rewrote Boinc to use another database back end.

Boinc is meant to be something that can be implemented by anybody.... if it requires Oracle, the number of people able to afford to run a small boinc project just took a nose dive.

---

Rob

Everythings up?Yup. But I aint got no work.

---

Dave Nelson

> With a microsoft setup (sorry, my knowledge area) you would licenses for
> Win2003 and SQL Server. This might cost retail around US$5000.00. If you
> were to ask all the people who were upset, annoyed or angered with the
> reliability of the infrastructure over the last couple of months to send in
> $1.00, you would have the money in no time...
>
> Continuing, seting up and running a proper Hardware Donation Drive (all users
> donate 5 bucks) would probably net you enough $$$ to replace all your machines
> with opterons...
>
> Guys - you just have to ask!!!!! We, the crazy seti community, would help!
>
> Cheers, Swissnic
>
UHHHH...they have been asking!
[url=http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/donor.html] is the web page, I got it thru the main Boinc page, sponsors, donate here. I donated a while back...did anyone else?

---

> Mysql is free.
>
> - Matt
>

Hi Matt,

Yep - thats true... So is Borland's Interbase... it's open-source and probably a more reliable RDBMS...

http://www.borland.com/interbase/index.html

Secondly, given that BOINC has such a massive tech following, pretty much anything you asked for would be provided free... including MSSQL or Oracle licenses. Thinking a little outside the box, there are lots of guru status techies out there who could also help out - 1 week SETI holidays @ berkeley for example! LOL ;o))))

According to the Status page, you currently have 6 machines connecting to the DB server? So a 25-user license would cover your needs for todays setup?

With a microsoft setup (sorry, my knowledge area) you would licenses for Win2003 and SQL Server. This might cost retail around US$5000.00. If you were to ask all the people who were upset, annoyed or angered with the reliability of the infrastructure over the last couple of months to send in $1.00, you would have the money in no time...

Continuing, seting up and running a proper Hardware Donation Drive (all users donate 5 bucks) would probably net you enough $$$ to replace all your machines with opterons...

Guys - you just have to ask!!!!! We, the crazy seti community, would help!

Cheers, Swissnic

---

> Now, dont flame me cause I hate mySql...I do not, its a great package, I use
> it myself. But if you want to scale, and protect your data, and have
> 99.99999999% uptime, then you need a more robust RDBMS.

So what you do say is that a server with Oracle installed doesn't need electricity ;-) Wow.....

---

Happy crunching

Mysql is free.

- Matt

---

-- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person
-- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude

Hi Ned,

Its to do with the way MySQL and Oracle (or most other SQL DB's) work.

Oracle, Sybase and SQL Server etc are transactional databases. They work by holding data and data changes in seperate areas. The changes are helded in a transaction log which is applied to the DB in a scheduled and controlled way.

If the db server crashes, it is less likely for the main db to receive any corruption because all data-write's are happening to the trans.log, not the main db, and if it does, all changes made to the db since last backup are help in the transaction log, which can be reapplied to the backup db.

Here's a link that explains it much better than me:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.0/static/tutorial-transactions.html

In the case of MySQL, it doesnt have this feature - all changes are constantly applied to the db - meaning it is being written to directly most of the time. If the power goes out again, MySQL is almost surely in the middle of a direct write to the main DB, and hence corruption!

MySQL is great for running a Forum Board for a web server, but it was never designed to be a mission-critical db server - and thats what berkeley are using it for at the moment...


Sorry for the crap explaination. but you hopefulyl see what I mean!

Cheers, Swissnic

---

> Now, dont flame me cause I hate mySql...I do not, its a great package, I use
> it myself. But if you want to scale, and protect your data, and have
> 99.99999999% uptime, then you need a more robust RDBMS.

I guess what I don't quite understand is how running Oracle would make the circuit breakers stop tripping out....

---

ADDED: Should have looked at the timestamp on the server page, it does look like it hasn't updated for some time.

> Um, Everything seems to be working
>

---

Database corruption? Power failure? Corrupted tables? This is silly, SETI is frequently held hostage to a toy database.

Sure, Oracle is hideously expensive, and it is that way for a reason: It stays up, it protects your data while the server crashes around you, its fast...and when you finally bring the server back up, Oracle is running in 10 minutes.

Now, dont flame me cause I hate mySql...I do not, its a great package, I use it myself. But if you want to scale, and protect your data, and have 99.99999999% uptime, then you need a more robust RDBMS.

Call Larry Ellison, and if you ask nicely, he will probably give it away to SETI for free.

---