Re: Simple thing to make pg_autovacuum more useful

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On Thu, 17 Jan 2008 17:38:57 -0500
Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

> "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:
> > Your objection is let's keep it as difficult as possible within the
> > existing paradigm because nobody thought pg_autovacuum could be
> > useful in the first place. 
> 
> No, my point is that there's no value in putting band-aids on an
> object that was never designed to be user-friendly.  The extra ease
> of use from putting defaults on that table's columns is insignificant
> compared to what we'd get by fixing its *real* problems:
> 
> * superuser-only, no mechanism to let users admin their own tables
>   (nor any way to reconcile user-set values with a DBA's possible
>   wish to override them)
> * no support for dumping and restoring settings
> 
> I don't think we should be encouraging direct manual insertions into
> pg_autovacuum in any case.
> 
> So I'd rather see some effort spent on figuring out what the API
> really *should* look like.  I don't know, other than that it should
> hard-wire as little as possible because we are likely to be changing
> the set of available parameters in future.  Maybe we need a concept
> like per-table settings for GUC variables?

Tom I don't understand this. Your arguments above are great but let's
be realistic. I am offering something that even *I* could do with code
that is simple and useful.

You are offering what appears to be a "solution". A perfectly valid one
in fact. Which one is going to get done first? Which one is going to
provide immediate benefit? 

I can't realistically code change the code for the first problem. I
might be able to hack my way through the second, I guarantee you I
could do my solution.

So why is it such a bad thing to implement something incrementally
useful? Especially considering my incremental solution doesn't
conflict with your todo for pg_autovacuum?

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake


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