DB Consultant Tasks
	-------------------

12Aug 2009: /home/production/cvs/JSOC/doc/consultant_work.txt

0. Become familiar with our present PostgreSQL implementations and
procedures. 

1. Develop and document a backup and restore procedure for databases
(jsoc, jsoc_sums, jsocdc0, jsocdc1). Recovery must be for multiple
failure modes.

2. Create and demonstrate a warm-standby of our databases on secondary 
machines. Warm-standby must be able to assume the master role within 
60 minutes and be up to date to within 2 minutes of the time of failure 
of the master.

3. Implement remote table replication via Slony or some equivalent.
Allow selection of tables for each remote host. Determine effective
host location for Slony. Demonstrate loading factors for local
and remote Slony.
 
4. Evaluate our web database plan (which uses slony) so that our web
server can respond to queries quickly, and potentially isolate 
egregious queries.

5. Analyse our query types and distribution and recommend efficiencies.

6. Allow viewing of DB operations and loads.

7. Suggest DB tuning parameters and options.

8. Investigate possibility of table partitioning for our large tables
of 100s of millions of rows. 

9. Evaluate the VSO plan to ensure that it does not negatively impact our dbase
performance (VSO wants access to our dbases)

10. We would like all relevant training and documentation.