Certainly in the UK, where I live, they're not. I don't think the poster stated where they live.

http://www.national-lottery.co.uk/player/p/help/playinginstore/faqs.ftl

Out of interest, what's the problem with master/slave under postgres?

Thank you for your replies.

I wrote the original comment - apologies, but I forgot to login (I don't login here often, I tend to lurk)

The reason I ask is because i've been suspicious of MySQL because of the dual licensing, and also because the (expensive) cluster version needs the indices to be in memory - which requires serious hardware for our setup as our data is 'long and thin'. However there is little experience of postgres here, so we spend the money.

Therefore i've never bothered with postgres, which is stupid, but I know that as many open source projects use mysql, it is the 'go to' database of choice. When speccing a database i've always asked around and people have pointed out the deficiencies of postgres as being the clustering and backup support.

To be specific - how does the clustering (any method) of postgres compare to standard mysql? What is the best way of doing hot backups? Where does the performance fall down?

I'd love to use postgres, but unfortunately i'm too busy doing other tasks to give it a good, proper test. Has anybody been through this already and do they mind sharing?

Ta,

Sean

Maybe it's time to push atheism as a 'religion'? Maybe we can succeed where Dawkins can't?

In a previous job at the start of my career, my company bought a Teradata system which came with the requisite sharp suited consultant, who told us how to lay out the DB schema.

Being Teradata all the hashed indexes were in vogue, so it was lightning fast.

Until the day they realised the users mainly did substring searches, which don't really work on a hashed index. Table scans a plenty = unhappy users.

It doesn't mean a RDBMS is bad, it means that technology misapplied always sucks.

Because Geode was crap! In a previous job we used embedded Geode boards in shops. They were useless - the hardware was some virtualised nonsense, the watchdogs didn't work, throughput was awful and documentation non-existent. Definitely the worst boards i've ever used.

Very true.

I was sorting out the network of a businessman friend of mine. He'd recently spent £4000 on 4 IP cameras and a PC to monitor it all.

I've never seen such suck. The interface only worked with IE7, nothing newer, and had to install an ActiveX control plus three other InstallShield installers to get any sort of picture. Most of the screen was overlaid with cheesy graphics, and some of the tooltips were in Chinese.

The suppliers didn't have a clue about it, all they do is buy this shite by the containerfull from China. The chance of a software fix is nil as the guy who wrote it probably committed suicide after seeing how bad it was.

Anyways I whipped up a Ubuntu Server install with Zoneminder, and it's like night and day.

DVR kit is in one of those vertical markets where appalling quality is the standard, it seems.

Our management have been chomping at the bit to get iphones.

Unfortunately they've also mandated we s/mime encrypt all intra-company email, which doesn't work on the thing as you can't install a certificate.

Does anyone with access to the new SDK know if certs have been added to the thing?

Wouldn't it be better to fix GCC so it has the same optimisations?