Ask YC: Anyone have a good implementation for multiple database support in Django?

[shafqat]

We're looking at Django, and while we love most of what we see in the 1.0 release, I'm a bit worried about the lack of multiple database support.

Has anyone here implemented this (basic usages for mysql master/slave(s) replication)? I'm not too concerned with sharding at the moment?

If you have done this, care to share ideas? Thoughts? Code?

Thanks all!

[mdasen]

Don't do this in Django. Just don't.

This should be done with a database proxy server. With MySQL, you can use MySQL Proxy and PostgreSQL has pgpool-II.

Yes, you could hack the Django code to solve your problem. Why do that when there is a very simple and tested product that already does that transparently? For me, supporting multiple databases in a web framework is akin to writing an HTTP server into your web framework. Maybe you should do it for testing purposes, but not for production.

[ii → mdasen]

There are reasons why mysql_replicated backend was created and used successfully in production instead of MySQL Proxy.

For example, MySQL Proxy knows nothing about transactions.

[dmpayton]

Just after DjangoCon there was a long discussion on django-dev about implementing multi-db support in the upcoming releases:

http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers/browse_thre...

Also, according to JKM, Django 1.0 does suport multi-db, it's just undocumented and at a lower level:

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6zbos/django_10...

HTH.

[dmpayton → dmpayton]

Followup (better late than never, right?) --

A few days after my post, Eric Florenzano put up a how-to for multi-db support in Django:

http://www.eflorenzano.com/blog/post/easy-multi-database-sup...

[shafqat → dmpayton]

Thanks for the links. Sounds promising!

[yourabi]

At DjangoCon I heard Pownce was doing that internally, you might want to ping them.

[shafqat → yourabi]

Good idea. I'll send Leah an email...

[ii]

MySQL master/slave replication is implemented:

http://softwaremaniacs.org/soft/mysql_replicated/en/

I'm not sure whether authors are here or not.

[iamelgringo]

Unless my memory fails me, in the "What Ponies do you want in Django?" session, this one came up quite a bit. Adrian and Jacob said that this was one of their top priorities, and suggested that it might make it into Django 1.1.

You could probably get a better response on the Django-users or Django-dev mailing lists.

[madels]

do you agree that good database design means good database implementation?

[utx00]

bmk

[utx00 → utx00]

i'm just trying to bookmark this article so that it appears under my comments. if anyone can suggest a better way (and bookmarking on the browser is not good enough, as i move around computers all day)

[yan → utx00]

If you upvote this article, it will show up under "saved" in your member profile page.

[utx00 → yan]

ah thanks. is there a limit?

[lacker → utx00]

How about saying something marginally intelligent. ;-)

[unexpected → utx00]

um, delicious?

[utx00 → unexpected]

thanks. i stopped using it about a year ago because it was getting really slow. maybe i should have another looksie.