Postgres Meeting 2016-05-24

Monday, 24 May, 2016-

Meeting with Ken, Lawrence, Dave, Isaac-
Ken requested the meeting to learn what postgres resources are used where.
Three postgres databases:

1) postgres.odyssey
- instructional management (exam management TA), grad admissions (OGSAS), email-sending system & printing & watiam (Isaac-maintained)
- OAT (ASUS, canned queries, bulk email, byron's data), graduate admissions
- hosted on a pair of CS servers, MFCF maintained
* Note to Isaac: oat-1 and oat-2 lack edocs and service-monitoring
- services maintained by odyssey@uwaterloo.ca - Isaac, transitioning to Nick

Drilling down: What's ogsas? python scripts running on odyssey.uwaterloo.ca (all Isaac's production code is on this webserver).

oat.uwaterloo.ca - MFCF vm server
- used for evaluate.uwaterloo.ca; canned queries used by units; portal
- Byron's code is there.

Overall: what's odyssey?
- applications in python; common routines

2) postgres.student.cs
- meant as an easy way to give postgres access to students / anyone with teaching-region accounts
- is this being used? unknown, per term. Fraser and Isaac know how to set them up.
- mediawiki - for CS100
- markus
- postgres060.student - virtual machine

3) postgres.cs
- easy way to give access to anyone with general-region accounts (with a few clicks by Isaac - would like it to be user-administered)
- used for bill's course-contact app, and subscription app.
- postgres160. virtual machine

Hosting of data and application servers moving to IST- development in-house
- intent is them servicing the load; giving us full access
- if we move, do we have formal permission from information steward?
- yes.

Discussion of the necessity of running postgres.student.cs and postgres.cs.
- postgres.student.cs has clear teaching-relevant reasons for existing.
- postgres.cs might or might not.

Under an IST-run postgres.odyssey, will we have the ability to add arbitrary tables/schemas/databases that connect to this data? We think so, if we get the permission from the information steward.
Will we have the ability to add arbitrary tables/schemas/databases that do NOT connect? Perhaps. To be determined.
- If we do, it seems quite possible that we no longer need to run our own postgres.cs general-region database.
- if we don't have that ability, perhaps we would be able to use some database from an external cloud provider? A discussion for later.

Ken didn't want to get into a general "postgres vs mysql" discussion, but he noted we could default to mysql for non-odyssey-related new databases, rather than using postgres. This might bear further discussion.

See also ST#104160