Re: database design question, new to postgresql

[Fei Liu <fei(dot)liu(at)aepnetworks(dot)com>]

Fei Liu wrote:
> Fei Liu wrote:
> > Hello group, I need to design and develop a web reporting system to 
> > let users query/view syslog files on a unix host. For now, I am 
> > concentrating on the authentication file that has user logon 
> > (success/failure) and logoff records. The log file is logrotated 
> > every week or so. My reporting system parses the log entries and put 
> > the result into a postgresql database (I am proposing to use 
> > postgresql as the backend). Since this deals with multi-year archive 
> > and I believe 'partitioing' is an ideal feature to handle this 
> > problem. So here is the design scheme:
> >
> > CREATE TABLE logon_success(
> >   name varchar(32) not null,
> >   srcip inet not null,
> >   date date not null,
> >   time time not null,
> >   ...
> > );
> >
> >
> > CREATE TABLE logon_success_yy${year}mm${month}(
> >   CHECK (date >= DATE '$year-$month-01' AND date < DATE 
> > '$next_year-$next_month-1')
> > )
> > INHERITS ($tname)
> > ;
> >
> > As you can see from the sample code, I am using perl to dynamically 
> > generate children tables as I parse log files in a daily cron job 
> > script. Once the log file is analyzed and archived in the database, I 
> > have a simple web UI that sysadmin can select and view user logon 
> > events. I have built a sample framework and it works so far. Keep in 
> > mind, this reporting system is not limited to just user logon, it 
> > should also work with system events such as services 
> > failures/startup, hardware failures, etc
> >
> > Now here are my questions:
> > 1) Should I use database to implement such a reporting system? Are 
> > there any alternatives, architects, designs?
> > 2) Is partitioning a good approach to speed up log query/view? The 
> > user comment in partitioning in pgsql manual seems to indicate 
> > partitioning may be slower than non-partitioned table under certain 
> > circumstances.
> > 3) How to avoid repetitive log entry scanning since my cron job 
> > script is run daily but logrotate runs weekly? This means everytime 
> > my script will be parsing duplicate entries.
> > 4) When parsing log files, it's quite possible that there are 
> > identical entries, for example a user logins really fast, resulting 2 
> > or more identical entries..In this case can I still use primary 
> > key/index at all? If I can, how do I design primary key or index to 
> > speed up query?
> > 3) What are the most glaring limitations and flaws in my design?
> >
> > Thank you for taking time to review and answer my questions! Let me 
> > know if I am not clear on any specific detail..
> >
> > Fei
> >
> > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> > TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
> Let me add one more question, what are the best approaches to analyze 
> postgresql query performance and how to improve postgresql query 
> performance?
> Fei
My initial testing has not shown any significant difference between a 
partitioning approach and a plain (all entries in master) database 
approach...
2005-01-01 | 00:27:55 | firewood | ssh | Login Successful | None | 
local | user9819 | 192.168.1.31

My test was based on two artificial tables that has 1700 records per day 
from 2004-02-01 to 2007-04-27, around 2 million entries that are 
identical in both tables.
My test script:
echo Testing database $t1 time based
time psql -p 5583 netilla postgres << EOF
select count(date) from $t1 where date > '2005-03-01' and date < 
'2006-12-11';
\q
EOF

echo Testing database $t2 time based
time psql -p 5583 netilla postgres << EOF
select count(date) from $t2 where date > '2005-03-01' and date < 
'2006-12-11';
\q
EOF

Result:
./timing_test.sh
Testing database logon_test time based
 count
---------
1121472
(1 row)

0.00user 0.00system 0:02.92elapsed 0%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+456minor)pagefaults 0swaps
Testing database logon_test2 time based
 count
---------
1121472
(1 row)

0.00user 0.00system 0:02.52elapsed 0%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+456minor)pagefaults 0swaps

But the numbers are really not static and logon_test2 (with 
partitioning) sometimes behave worse than logon_test...
Fei