I don't mean to be rude or anything, but having 3rd-party solution is a scary option for a business enterprise. I know that they're stable and all, but if it's not supported by PostgreSQL themselves (i.e. included in PostgreSQL as a whole package), we're afraid that we have to change our code/design in case the product has stopped progress.Those are very interesting remarks. I'm the author of PL/Java, a module that also could be thought of as "not supported by PostgreSQL themselves", and I've made the same reflection as you have. It would be beneficial to have some organisational entity within Postgres where this issue could be addressed (i.e. packaging/synchronization and supported configurations). I think it could give a real boost to PostgreSQL as such.
For example, pgcluster's patch is for PostgreSQL 7.3.6. It's not in sync with PostgreSQL's current version (I'm not blaming the guy... He's created a very good solution and I'm thankful for that). It's just that for my company (and I guess many other companies too), it's more appealing to have a database solution that comes in a package.
Sure, an open source community does not make support commitments. But the PostgreSQL community is large and that creates (a sense of) safety and continuity. This sense is not automatically transferred to the "3rd-party solutions".
From a users perspective and perhaps especially from the decision makers perspective, the fact that you have to download various modules from gborg etc. is indeed scary. Who will support your chosen solution a year from now? IMHO, if PosgreSQL is aiming for larger business acceptance, this has to be resolved. Contributors like myself must be given the opportunity to get things "verified" and checked in as "supported". It would do PostgreSQL an awful lot of good if there where supported configurations including replication, server side language support (Perl, Tcl, Java, etc.), JDBC and ODCB drivers, and other things that you'd normally find in commercial enterprise solutions.
Regards,
Thomas Hallgren
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