Cascading Replication

Cascading Replication is now part of PostgreSQL 9.2, thanks to Fujii Masao.

The idea is that a streaming replication standby can also stream data onto other standbys. This allows a complex network of interrelated servers to fulfil the roles of High Availability, High Durability, Distributed data access capacity and Reporting requirements.

You can set up chained configurations like A -> B -> C.

or more complex arrangements like
......A
....B....E
..C.D...F.G

This should make it much easier to reduce bandwidth for intercontinental replication.

Nice thing is that Hot Standby feedback works across the whole cluster, so you easily manage the interrelationships between servers.

CHAR(11) Conference Success

Finally recovered from attending CHAR(11) in Cambridge, UK. 2 complete days of Clustering, High Availability and Replication talks from various experts.

We had 15 talks from 14 speakers from US, Japan and from 8 European countries, including the keynote from Jan Wieck. Attendees came from US and all across Europe, many of whom could give detailed talks themselves. There's always next year...

The most amazing thing were the comments we received from attendees. Every talk was packed solid, and judging by the seats alone it seems almost everybody went to all the talks - for the whole talk. I don't recall a conference having such a good attendee rate, not even CHAR(10) last year.

Based on that, it looks pretty certain that we'll run CHAR(12) next year. We did discuss Japan for CHAR(12) but that's not going to be as easy as we'd hoped. Let's see how that goes.

I'm pleased with how everything ran, so a big thanks to the organising team.

Thanks very much to Koichi Suzuki for visiting again. The panel discussion between Postgres-XC, MGRID and Greenplum was very enlightening.

Thanks to all the speakers and attendees also.