PostgreSQL, Sun, and Integration

Sun sure are busy with the announcements this week.

With the PostgreSQL announcement (and they don't seem to have mastered the spelling of PostgreSQL, it seems), Sun are offering to integrate and support PostgreSQL into Solaris.

Now, this has to be a good thing for both Sun and PostgreSQL. But does it help me?

I'm not really sure that integration does help me. Note that it's the integration - or bundling - that I have a problem with, not Sun supporting it or optimizing it or just supplying it.

Sun already bundle the Apache web server and Tomcat. I spend quite a lot of time setting up web servers, usually using Apache and Tomcat, often with other components (including, as it happens, PostgreSQL on occasions). And I never use the bundled versions that Sun supply. And the reason it quite simple - Sun's versions aren't the right versions, aren't set up the way I need, and are installed in the wrong place. It's much easier and safer to just install them yourself and you know exactly how they're set up and that they're going to work exactly the way you want, and that you can upgrade to the latest version at any time of your choosing.

Integration really ties you up in knots. Solaris comes with ancient versions of Gnome, and because they're integrated we're stuck with them. Not only that, because it's integral with Solaris 10, we can't apply the same version to our Solaris 9 or 8 machines. Integration locks application update to OS updates, and everybody loses.

What I want - and Sun need - is the ability to choose between sticking with a given version, or going to a new version. This requires that products such as Gnome/JDS (and the same argument applies to anything else, like Mozilla, OpenSSL, Apache, even Java) are unbundled and separated from the core OS. Then, I can select whether I want to stay with Gnome 2.6 (as in the version that comes with JDS on Solaris 10) or have a Gnome 2.12 desktop instead.

Likewise for PostgreSQL, which started this whole blog entry. For different applications, I'm going to have to support different versions - maybe on the same physical machine (using zones, for example). I need the ability to make that choice independent of the underlying OS version, otherwise you end up with an upgrade nightmare.