There is currently discussion within the Ingres engineering group on the processes that should be employed to support community contributions. In parallel, there is a discussion on the tools that can best support the community effort. An issue and bug tracker produce by Atlassian called Jira is very promising but does not offer Ingres support out-of-the-box. I produced a set of configuration files for Jira that enables Ingres 2006 to be used as the repository and went to Atlassian community site to see how to contribute the patch. I found a ticket amongst their community issues JRA-6150 where one of their engineers had made configuration changes for Ingres 2.6.
I made a similar patch file and attached it to the ticket and received a response from the engineer added as a comment to the ticket. The gist of the response was that Atlassian already supports seven databases we don’t need an eighth, especially as some are in wider use than others. Resources would be better utilized focusing on Jira features rather than database support.
I can see some of the merits of this argument but with the wealth of innovation, support and features found in Ingres should this eighth entry into the field be dismissed?
Whilst Atlassian contemplate the error of their ways you can still download the patch and apply it to Jira for a 30 day evaluation.
For the significance of the number eight take a look at Numbers in Chinese Culture where the following quote
“It is no coincidence that the Summer Olympics in Beijing are scheduled to open on 08/08/08 at 8 p.m.” taken from an article from the Herald Tribune article Numbers Game in China by Jim Yardley is taken.
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