We ran some heavy duty performance tests on PostgreSQL, and it had no problems. It's a heavy-duty relational database that supports a lot of advanced features very well. The sites run 12 servers with PostgreSQL, commonly known as Postgres, driving all its dynamic applications such as book sales, message boards, mailing lists and software sharing. Since adopting an open source platform, neither the WDN nor GeoCommunity has crashed or lost data. WDN draws a lot of traffic each day, mostly wireless communication professionals in search of industry news or a hot new job or product.
Visitors also like to download software, post messages and take part in ongoing discussion groups.
But we would hear about it if the site was hard to navigate or if people had to reboot. So many businesses are awakening to open source's potential that Forrester Research recently predicted open source products will radically reshape the software industry by 2004. The Internet grew up in an open source environment, so it's no great surprise that the open source development model has spawned some of the best, and most widely used, Web business applications and tools, such as Linux operating systems, Apache Web servers, and Perl and PHP scripting. The lower overall cost of open source software is attractive to small and mid-sized businesses, which can spend thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars on purchasing or licensing proprietary applications alone. Another important advantage is that its code is open and modifiable.