Forum OpenACS Q&A: lzText and bboard

1: lzText and bboard

Posted by Don Baccus on 04/27/00 12:25 AM

It looks like we've accidently broken 3.2.2 for PG 6.5.3, so that's
gotten me thinking about lzText, the compressed text type that will
allow us to slurp a full 32KB textarea into database text fields (if
you compile PG with a 16KB BLCKSZ as I recommend).

As those of you who read my stupid ns_sendmail non-problem know, I'm
moving my birdnotes.net site to a new server. Upgrading to AOLserver3
and PG7 and it's all working, way cool!

I edited the pg_dump file of the database for testing, and changed the
text type of the bboard message to lztext, and loaded up the 6.5.3
version of the database.

Voila! It worked! The old messages got loaded and compressed, and
bboard still works, and lets me respond and all that good stuff.

So, the question is - when should we switch over to the new type?
After PG 7 is officially released on (presumably) Sunday?

Thoughts? This really cuts us off firmly from PG7, but I think we're
at that point anyway. If folks agree, I'll try to find a couple of
hours to poke through the datamodel looking for lztext victims.
Things like general comments and the like, as well as bboard, can
benefit from this.

Just think, 32KB text message stuffing, no need for ugly CLOBS...

2: Response to lzText and bboard (response to 1)

Posted by Roberto Mello on 04/27/00 12:40 AM

I am for it. lztext will allow to provide clob-like functionality but better than clob. OpenACS (argh, I want to type ACS/pg) is moving forward and I'd rather make the change now when we are still in beta status than later when we will be in final releases.

I think Don has mentioned the advantages of lzText well enough. Anyone against ?

3: Response to lzText and bboard (response to 1)

Posted by Dan Wickstrom on 04/27/00 01:00 AM

I think it would be great if we could use lztext. I've been porting webmail, and it would save me the trouble of having to do clob emulation in java.

Now if we could just get rid of the need to use blobs.

4: Response to lzText and bboard (response to 1)

Posted by Ben Adida on 04/27/00 01:22 AM

Wasn't there talk of waiting until Postgres final to start doing this so we don't force a complete beta thing on our users?

5: Response to lzText and bboard (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 04/27/00 02:02 AM

Yeah, Ben, that's why I said:

"So, the question is - when should we switch over to the new type? After PG 7 is officially released on
(presumably) Sunday? "

in my note :)

This is what I recommend. I can do it sometime next week if all goes to plan.