I am considering using GridSQL in a production environment. However, I do have s

Question

I am considering using GridSQL in a production environment. However, I do have some indications that it is not ready. One is that it got excluded by the offering of EnterpriseDB a while ago, and the forums seem to report a few wrong results and relatively severe bugs. The alternatives to GridSQL, however cost around 100.000$ to buy, so I was thinking to utilize some of this money to ensure that GridSQL gets ready for production. At the same time, I could risk spending 50.000$ and months of work on the development of GridSQL, just to discover that the design was flawed and that a complete rewrite is needed. Then I would have to buy the commercial alternatives to GridSQL and the existence of my startup would be at risk.

Question

What steps would you take to ensure that there is as little risk as possible that the worst case scenario described above would happen? It is unrealistic that I could do much testing nor code review/coding myself (I am also not the best developer), so please describe where to find the guys that would need to do the work.

Explanation / Answer

It is unrealistic that I could do much testing nor code review/coding myself

That's false.

When using open-source products you are obligated to (1) run the tests that come with the product and (2) write your own acceptance tests.

If the project does not have a complete test suite, don't use it.

If it does have a complete test suite, then be sure it passes it's own tests.

Your acceptance test should assure that the features you're going to use really work. These acceptance tests will also be integration tests between your code and the project you're using.

You must test open source products you use. Or, you must pay someone to do this testing for you. Companies like Red Hat provide support for integrated, tested distributions of Linux components.

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