Re: Proposal: Commit timestamp

On Feb 3, 2007, at 5:09 PM, Jan Wieck wrote:

> On 2/3/2007 4:58 PM, Theo Schlossnagle wrote:
>
> I don't have any such paper and the proof of concept will be the
> implementation of the system. I do however see enough resistance
> against this proposal to withdraw the commit timestamp at this
> time. The new replication system will therefore require the
> installation of a patched, non-standard PostgreSQL version,
> compiled from sources cluster wide in order to be used. I am aware
> that this will dramatically reduce it's popularity but it is
> impossible to develop this essential feature as an external module.
>
> I thank everyone for their attention.

Actually, I believe the commit timestamp stuff would be very useful
in general. I would certainly like to see rigorous proofs of any
multi-master replication technology built on top of them. I believe
that while your replication stuff might rely on the commit
timestamps, the commit timestamps rely on thing else (except the work
that you have been churning on).

Using commit timestamps, one can easily implement cross vendor
database replication. These can be used to implement something like
trigger selective redo logs. I think they can be used to produce DML
logs that will require a lot less accounting to manage replicating
tables from PostgreSQL into another database (like Oracle or MySQL).

// Theo Schlossnagle
// CTO -- http://www.omniti.com/~jesus/
// OmniTI Computer Consulting, Inc. -- http://www.omniti.com/