Open Source development practices have already delivered a lot of benefit for e3000 owners, from the Samba file and resource sharing utility that’s now part of MPE/iX to the Apache Web Server which HP calls its primary Web host platform for the 3000. But in the past few weeks the first open source database for the e3000 has emerged, providing a new relational data platform for a computer in its 28th year of service. PostgreSQL has been ported by Mark Bixby, the engineer who works for HP’s 3000 labs by day but keeps on tinkering and enhancing for the system on his own time. Bixby was the first to port Apache to the 3000 several years ago, and he has delivered things like Domain Name Services software and the Syslog system logging utility from the world of Unix to the e3000. His PostgreSQL port is starting its 3000 life the same way the Apache, DNS and Syslog work did: as free downloadable software not supported by HP. Apache, DNS and Syslog are now part of MPE/iX, but Bixby was quick to caution his latest port didn’t represent any HP plans about supporting another database for the 3000.

But the engineer was excited about giving the 3000 community a choice of a database which can be modified and enhanced by anybody. His motivation for the port and its prospects for the customer base lie in applications. “There are various Open Source applications with the capability of talking directly to various Open Source databases,” he said last summer, while the community discussed using Open Source code that became available for another database. “If you really, really needed to have a specific application, you might be motivated to also port the database too — which might possibly take less time than designing a custom TurboIMAGE interface that would be usable by the application.” By the end of March Bixby unveiled a beta-test version of PostgreSQL on the e3000, saying “believe in the power and glory of Open Source. You now have a new choice in databases for the e3000. The great thing about it being Open Source is that the people who would like to see changes can go ahead and make them.” You can download the database for your e3000 at Bixby’s Web site, www.bixby.org/mark/postgresqlix.html.

PostgreSQL doesn’t have the advantage of TurboIMAGE in transaction reliability, or IMAGE’s intense integration with MPE/iX for performance. But the database is a step into a world of open interfaces and open source data management for the e3000 community. Gavin Scott of Allegro Consultants said that “PostgreSQL has a chance to be one of the first really big Open Source successes for MPE. There are opportunities to make it much more MPE-like in terms of reliability and performance by getting it to use some of the same MPE facilities that make IMAGE what it is. This would include teaching it to use the Transaction Manager. It might also be possible to hook it up to IMAGE the way Allbase is, thus providing a free replacement for Allbase which is more up to date and perhaps more actively maintained. There are a lot of quite interesting possibilities.” Another is PostgreSQL’s support of trigger functions written in procedural languages, which will allow procedures like companies validating zip or postal codes.

In an e3000 community full of conservative database administrators and IT chiefs, an Open Source database could be viewed as a new toy to experiment with — but far from reliable enough to run mission-critical applications. But already PostgreSQL is offering new functionality for the platform. Within a few days of the database coming online at Bixby’s personal Web site, Peter Osborne of Carleton Technologies put it together with PHP, a server-side HTML scripting language Bixby ported to the 3000 last year which can authenticate users on Web sites and track their usage. NewsWire contributing editor Shawn Gordon said at his company, “My Web designer uses PHP a lot. PHP is a lot like Cold Fusion, except more, it seems, and it has database access.” This access is with PostgreSQL, and Osborne described using the pair in Web development on his e3000 at Carleton, which makes the Bookware 3000 college bookstore application.

“I compiled it as a DSO so that it plugs into WebWise for HTTPS, or any other version of Apache that supports DSOs,” he reported. “Once that was complete, I skimmed through the basic steps in the PostgreSQL documentation to create a database, and then used some examples from php.net to write the necessary PHP. I now have a HTML form that allows me to add entries to my PostgreSQL database, as well as a search engine to retrieve data. PHP and PostgreSQL support persistent connections — meaning that once you have created a few connections to the database, these connections are kept alive in a pool for later use. This reduces the amount of resources PostgreSQL uses at the beginning of each request.” More info on PostgreSQL is at postgresql.readysetnet.com