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ibarwick / firebird_fdw

A PostgreSQL foreign data wrapper (FDW) for Firebird - latest version 1.4.0 (2024-05-11)
https://sql-info.de/postgresql/firebird-fdw/index.html
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Still experimental? #4

Closed daurnimator closed 6 years ago

daurnimator commented 6 years ago

Is this module still considered experiemental? Is it still being maintained?

mbecroft commented 6 years ago

daurnimator notifications@github.com writes:

Is this module still considered experiemental? Is it still being maintained?

Greetings,

We use firebird_fdw in production for clients at True Group, and have outstanding pull requests from about 2 years ago. I believe ibarwick, the maintainer, has made some other improvements in the last year or so...so I suppose it is maintained, but it's a bit of a niche product so the level of activity is not high. For one thing, none of our pull requests have been actioned...at some point we'll rebase ours with ibarwick's latest changes and try again.

Part of the trouble is that it is maintained by 2nd Quadrant, who are not very interested in doing anything (even accepting simple pull requests for obvious bug fixes or feature improvements) unless they are being paid for it.

We are aware of at least one 'crashes postgres' bug, the fix for which is on our todo list, but we have a workaround in place, so it may be a few months...

It would be good to network with others using this module. So let's all keep in touch via this ticket for now, or directly.

I don't have it on me, but when I do, I will update this with a link to the True Group repos. If we still can't get anything out of 2nd Quadrant, then it may be that our version becomes the de-facto free version and 2nd Quadrant may pull from us when they feel like it for their paying clients.

Feel free to reach out with any questions or if you need help. We are pretty familiar with the module and run it in multiple production environments, and happy to share our knowledge.

Cheers,

-- Mario Becroft mb@becroft.co.nz t: @MarioBecroft p: +64-9-974-9244 m: +64-21-038-5178 w: http://www.becroft.co.nz/

daurnimator commented 6 years ago

I believe ibarwick, the maintainer, has made some other improvements in the last year or so...

The last commit was in 2016

For one thing, none of our pull requests have been actioned

I'm only seeing a single PR open (and none closed), and it's not by you?

mbecroft commented 6 years ago

daurnimator notifications@github.com writes:

I believe ibarwick, the maintainer, has made some other improvements in the last year or so...

The last commit was in 2016

I'm only going on something my colleague mentioned to me a few months back; possibly I am mistaken, or he was referring to another repo maintained by someone else.

For one thing, none of our pull requests have been actioned

I'm only seeing a single PR open (and none closed), and it's not by you?

It would not have my name on it, as it is maintained by a member of my team.

Will check what's up with this on Monday.

Is there anything preventing you using the extension right now? Probably compatibility with current pg version, for a start. I can help you there. Let me see on Monday.

Cheers,

-- Mario Becroft mb@becroft.co.nz t: @MarioBecroft p: +64-9-974-9244 m: +64-21-038-5178 w: http://www.becroft.co.nz/

daurnimator commented 6 years ago

Is there anything preventing you using the extension right now?

It influences the architecture for an product that isn't written yet. The product needs to interact with a firebird database; I'm trying to figure out if firebird_fdw is mature enough to talk to it directly from postgres, or if we need to do it from some other process. So far it sounds like firebird_fdw is not mature enough; and seems mostly unmaintained.

mbecroft commented 6 years ago

daurnimator notifications@github.com writes:

So far it sounds like firebird_fdw is not mature enough; and seems mostly unmaintained.

I would say it could be mature enough; we have had it in production for a good 3 years. There is only one known crash bug we have found but not had the time or motivation to fix. Other than that, we have had zero issues after running it in production for several years.

2nd Quadrant will maintain it for you, for a fee.

My company also maintains it. Please feel free to contact me directly on mb@true.group if I can help you further (no charge) to assess it for your use-case.

Really, not much maintenance is needed except keeping it up-to-date with current pg versions.

I don't know about your use case, but we find it very convenient having a direct foreign table interface to Firebird databases, as queries can seamlessly access data from the local database, other sources, and Firebird databases. You can create a view that pulls data from all of the above, and the poor middleware or front-end developer doesn't have to know or care how and where all the data is being obtained.

Good luck with your project and selection of suitable technologies.

Cheers,

-- Mario Becroft mb@becroft.co.nz t: @MarioBecroft p: +64-9-974-9244 m: +64-21-038-5178 w: http://www.becroft.co.nz/

ibarwick commented 6 years ago

Hi, yes unfortunately this is not really being maintained at the moment; it's a personal project which is dependent on the very limited amount of free time I've had available over the last couple of years, and as @mbecroft mentioned, it is a very niche application. Funnily enough I was thinking about this the other day, as I may have a bit more time soon, though can't promise anything at this point.

ibarwick commented 6 years ago

It lives, it lives... FYI I've done some major cleanup on both this and the libfq API, hopefully fixing some of the more visible issues, which should result in a tagged release "soon" (though bear in mind this is still very much a personal free-time project and circumstances can change any time).