Re: dropping back-ldbm (was: commit: ldap/servers/slapd connection.c)

[asr@ufl.edu]

==> On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 16:19:17 -0800, Quanah Gibson-Mount <quanah@stanford.edu> said:


> I suffered several years of an ldbm based directory.  The comfort your
> customers feel is illusionary, and sadly like many things psychological, it
> is all in their head. :P

A facility broken in many ways I understand is often preferable to a facility
broken in fewer ways, which I don't understand.  This ripples out to the
customers of my services, etc.  This rapidly becomes a philosophical question
requiring beer to settle properly: If users of my 2.6 million object LDBM
database believe (in their head) that they're happy... :)

Now, we're working on BDB; don't get me wrong.  But the comfort is real.  


> Third, how much time is spent just keeping LDBM working, when the real
> future is in other backends?  It is like hiring someone to keep updating a
> mainframe that can be used, but isn't, just in case you decide to use it
> again.  It eats up time, and time is money, opensource software or not.

But this is a mainframe we -are- in fact using, every day. 


> Finally, none of this addresses the question as to when we evaluate things 
> for retirement.

Well, Kurt did that in parallel to this message.  Don't think I can improve on
it.


- Allen S. Rout