Forum OpenACS Q&A: Switching to OpenACS: What will bite me?

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1: Switching to OpenACS: What will bite me?
Posted by David Eison on 10/23/00 01:03 AM
As a developer at aD, I have some experience with keeping ACS Classic
and (to a lesser extent) Oracle running.

For a personal project, I'd rather run on PostGres to be 100% sure
that I'm keeping it legal.  I hear PostGres is easier to keep running
than Oracle is; anyone know what I'm likely to run into (besides not
having the 3.3 API) in switching gears from Oracle-backed to
Postgres-backed?  (I apologize if this is a FAQ, please just point me
in the right direction.  I nosed around for a bit and didn't come up
with anything)

Thanks,
David

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2: Response to Switching to OpenACS: What will bite me? (response to 1)
Posted by Roberto Mello on 10/23/00 02:06 AM
Postgres is very easy to maintain. I just keep the dabatases backed up and swicth to the newer versions a little after they are out.

psql is your friend (PG's equivalent of sql*plus). If you are doing multiple boxes or external clients, look at the permissions system (pg_hba.conf). If you are not doing that, then don't have PG listening on an IP port (defaults to 5432).

Run VACUUM ANALYZE every night.

By default PG comes compiled with an 8 Kb block size but you can recompile it for 16. Instructions for that, plus command line options to increase your performance plus a script that Don wrote that a) backs up your AOLserver DB, b) gzips and ftp it to a remote place and c) runs VACUUM ANALYZE for you, are all in the docs at www.openacs.org/doc/openacs (Simple PG install Guide and Getting Started Guide).

That's what I can think of right now. Do you have any specific questions?

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3: Response to Switching to OpenACS: What will bite me? (response to 1)
Posted by Klyde Beattie on 11/15/01 12:54 AM
I find it odd that the script would use ftp. My hope is that one day even a bank would be able to use OpenACS to manage accounts. And OpenACS would reap the benifits of people who are managing millions of dollars helping with security. Perhaps this seems like a moot point but i would suggest keeping everything secure. Perhaps i'll rewrite the script to use ssh, I'm i being to radical here?