Re: Database back up again

[Peter Mount <peter@retep.org.uk>]

Robert Creager wrote:
> When grilled further on (Thu, 22 Jul 2004 19:54:36 -0500),
> Michael Sallman <msallman@pro-ns.net> confessed:
> 
> 
>>On the database problem, does anyone know if MySQL has a size limit on 
>>index files? I know there are size limits/defaults on the tables 
>>themselves (which I ran into a while back with the observations table) 
>>that can be tweaked, but I haven't found anything on the index files.
>>It would probably make sense to break up my observations table (which is 
>>now 8.9 gigs in size) into several smaller tables. But then I'd have to 
>>re-code all the database queries. :-(
>>
> 
> 
> Before you do that, think of switching to PostgreSQL.  No practical limits
> you'll run into.  I know there are a few of us on the list (myself, Chris A.,
> others?) that could assist you in converting.

When I replied yesterday, I thought Mike was running PostgreSQL, not 
MySQL. The size limit is probably the 2Gb limit (I don't know how MySQL 
handles it, but it's probably the index reaching that limit).

PostgreSQL doesn't have this problem, because it splits all table/index 
files into 1Gb chunks, so the practical limit is usually the amount of 
disk space available.

> I'm up to 6.3 gigs total for my ROB data db, with nary a problem.  I've not
> nearly the number of observations you have, but have more data per observation.

The largest I've currently got is about 3Gb offline and 1.2Gb online 
(non-astronomical at the moment), but I can see those growing shortly.

Peter

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