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Subject: Re: SQL Mail Delivery Options
From: Brad Knowles (blkskynet.be)
Date: Mon Apr 03 2000 - 18:13:53 CDT

At 9:00 AM +1000 2000/4/4, Matthew Hawkins wrote:

> I'll consider myself extremely lucky too, and every other MySQL user I
> know of. I haven't heard a single case of MySQL losing data.

        Just because you haven't met them until now doesn't mean that
they don't exist. For example, we have lost data due to MySQL. This
is one of the reasons why we're switching to Sybase for our larger
and transaction-oriented databases.

> It's another one of those FFS vs. ext2 debates - sync writes versus
> async. Nobody has heard of a Linux system irrevocably losing data due
> to async writes, but those against the concept (particularly because
> _their_ favourite OS loses out big time in comparitave performance
> benchmarks) seem to want to bad mouth it all the time.

        Again, we've had it happen, and I've spoken to a number of other
people who have had filesystems irrevocably toasted because of async
mounts -- and not just under Linux, although it does make them much
easier since it does async by default.

> The MySQL manual even states WHY it doesn't do transactions, in a whole
> section dedicated to the concept! RTFM! :-) It achieves the same
> purpose of transactions using a different method that doesn't incur some
> of the drawbacks of a transactional system.

        In my personal experience, they have failed to achieve their
objective in this area.

        IMO, as with many examples of NIH syndrome, once they've declared
that something is "bad" and they have a "better" way of doing it,
once they finally discover that their way actually isn't better, they
can't go back for obvious reasons but they also can't go forward.
This is particularly typical of things that I've seen from Microsoft. 

--
   These are my opinions -- not to be taken as official Skynet policy
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Brad Knowles, <blkskynet.be>                || Belgacom Skynet SA/NV
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