Hey folks,
Thanks for all the responses. A few follow-ups and then an invitation.
While this will be an AOLserver project, the ACS component at this time is small in terms of delivered functionality as to be almost non-existent. The ACS component is not involved in the five-nines, so actually this site will be using PG for the ACS, and some ODBMS to be named to deliver its primary functionality which may not even be delivered via HTTP. So we are not at this moment interested in Oracle at all, although I will take a look at Clustra.
One differentiator of ODBMS vs. RDBMS websites and brochures is that many ODBMSs claim to be specially configured for telecomm or similar applications that need "embedding", "low dba maintenance", "24x7xForever" and highly reliable and tolerant distributed architectures. I'm not sure what that means apart from brochureware, but I'll know more later. These are certainly the client's perceived requirements.
I am still not sure about the client's client. The claim is they are conservative, very serious, and reasonably well-heeled. I submit an invoice tomorrow, and that will be one test.
Invitation: I claim to be a software engineer, not a network engineer, not a database engineer, not a security specialist, and not a sysadmin. I am in charge of the servers. Part of my responsibilities is to put together a team of consultants that can put this thing together: determine requirements, design the system, participate in reviews, vet vendors, create software layers, build the thing, test it well, install it, etc. At this moment, it looks as though participants will be needed for a day or three at a time at several stages throughout the project. I may have more time for another deep, C/C++ based, AOLserver hacker, especially someone familiar with the hoops needed to get AOLserver to speak in multiple tongues simultaneously. I believe there is some serious AOLserver hacking to be performed.
If you are interested in participating anywhere from a few hours to a few days to a few weeks, please send me an email and include rate information, your specialty, and some details of your experience. I ain't promising anything of course, I am still trying to determine which of Tom's descriptions fits.
And please, let's do keep telling us all about what it takes to provide five-nines. I find this very interesting and educational, and I believe/hope it's an important topic for many OpenACS systems.
