"Joshua D. Drake" <jd at commandprompt.com> writes:
> On Tue, 2007-01-09 at 12:36 -0500, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
>> On Tue, Jan 09, 2007 at 08:52:48AM -0800, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>> > O.k. could you guys have given the gentlemen any more useless of a
>> > response?
>> 
>> Uh, yes.  I wanted to know what the comparison class is.  That seems
>> a reasonable question.  For instance, in your answers:
>> 
>> > * It can be difficult to manage/administrate
>> 
>> Not compared to erserver,
>
> O.k. but besides you and maybe 5 other companies ;) who actually ran
> ERserver? Or more to the point, who in the world is running ERserver
> now. For that matter, unless in the know has even heard of ERserver?

I was talking to someone last week that apparently still is running
eRServer.  That puts them in a pretty singular sort of group...

>>  I can assure you.  And some of the "ease of
>> administration" that certain other tools provide comes at the cost og
>> being unable to do a whole whack of stuff.
>
> I believe it is a reasonable theory that the person was looking for
> general disadvantages (which are indeed limitations) to the product as a
> whole and not in comparison to any other product.

Disadvantages relative to itself are necessarily null/void.

The only other alternative that seems plausible would be to consider
disadvantages as compared to not using replication at all.

Neither of those comparisons seems particularly useful.

>> There are plenty of limitations, I agree; but whether they're
>> disadvantages depends pretty much on what you want to do.
>
> Agreed but a general splat of a faq would have probably provided a more
> useful response, yes?

Actually, no.  I regularly see this sort of thing, where people
randomly emit "request for comparison" where the thing to be compared
to isn't even alluded to.  There is no way of answering that without
them making themselves clear on the fact that you need to have a point
of comparison.

I did a technical book review a few years back on a book on "Web
services security" which turned out to be an total disaster because
the authors were trying to declare advantages and disadvantages
without having any coherent idea of what they were talking about let
alone comparing to.

We periodically see on pg-advocacy threads that start with the line
"what are the advantages and disadvantages of PostgreSQL?" and that,
again, is necessarily devoid of content without the point of reference
of having something else to compare it to.

Otherwise, it is NOT silly to consider the answers to be of the sort:

- How is PostgreSQL better/worse than writing things down on paper?

- In what ways is Slony-I better/worse than having a Gene Simmons doll
on one's desk that sings "I want to rock and roll all night" when you
press a button?

The latter is almost certainly a more frivolous form of response than
what was in mind, but that doesn't mean that the initial question
doesn't need to be improved upon...
-- 
"cbbrowne","@","ca.afilias.info"
<http://dba2.int.libertyrms.com/>
Christopher Browne
(416) 673-4124 (land)