[rt-users] Headsup! Mysql 3.23.x Instability (AKA: Keep Backups!)

[Anil Madhavapeddy]

Tobias Brox wrote:
> 
> > At our work the CVS repositories are backed up rigorously, but other
> > stuff like MySQL is sometimes given a lower priority (if they are
> > on development servers for example).
> 
> IMO a good backup possibilities and a good roll-forward system (like the
> update-log) is some of the more significal advantages of using a DBMS.
> When discarding that, you could just as well use flat files. :)
> 

Very true ... 

In MySQL's case though, I would never use it to store truely important
data, as it doesn't provide functions like atomic transactions or
rollback ... a sudden power outage in the middle of an operation is
occasionally sufficent to totally corrupt your MySQL database, which
is something rarely seen in high-end transaction based databases that
simply rollback to the previous state after a failure.

Still, for a system like RT, which has relatively few records, and 
also a low rate of entries (unless your entire company
is sitting there feverishly entering tasks 24 hours a day :) , MySQL
is pretty perfect - small, fast, and free.

There's an interesting thread on Slashdot at the moment about the
advantages/disadvantages of MySQL and other RDBMS here:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/05/0920247&mode=thread

Not of relevance for RT1, but possibly for RT2 when considering
the platform to use if reliability is of great important 
(Postgres 7 is meant to support rollback I believe, which makes
it quite an attractive choice for reliability, if not speed)

Anil