Re: Temporary tables and disk activity

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>> One of the things on the TODO list is making the size of temp-table
>> buffers user-configurable.  (Temp table buffers are per-backend, they
>> are not part of the shared buffer arena.)  With a large temp-table arena
>> we'd never need to write to the kernel in the first place.  Right now
>> you could manually increase the #define that sets it, but it would not
>> pay to make it very large because the management algorithms are very
>> stupid (linear scans).  That has to be fixed first :-(

> I assume you mean your TODO list because the official one has no mention
> of this.

Doesn't it?  We've surely discussed the problem enough times, eg
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2002-08/msg00380.php
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2002-09/msg01368.php
or for that matter here's Vadim complaining about it seven years ago:
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/1997-12/msg00215.php

            regards, tom lane