Re: Reduction in WAL for UPDATEs

Gregory Stark wrote:
> "Tom Lane" <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> writes:
> 
>> Yeah, this illustrates my concern that the proposal is too narrowly
>> focused on a specific benchmark.
> 
> A lot of the recently proposed changes don't really fit in the "optimizations"
> category very well at all. I think of them more as "avoiding pitfalls".
> 
> Currently Postgres works quite well if your application is designed around its
> performance profile. But as soon as you do something "strange" you run the
> risk of running into various pitfalls.

I would go a step further. Once you get into real life scenarios with 
real life work loads, you run into various pitfalls.

> 
> If you keep a long-running transaction open you suddenly find your tables
> bloating. If your table grows too large vacuum takes too long to complete and
> your tables bloat. If you update the same record many times instead of
> batching updates and performing a single update your table bloats. 

Long-running transaction is a big problem. I wish I knew how to solve it.

> 
> This one is similar, if you keep a bunch of static data attached to some small
> dynamic data your WAL and table bloats. Certainly you could have engineered
> your system not to fall into this pitfall, but only if you knew about it and
> only if it was worth the effort and other possible costs of doing so.
> 

It seems to me the solution could be useful. We have lots of tables that 
fall into the category that the test table presented.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake



-- 
      === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 || 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
Providing the most comprehensive  PostgreSQL solutions since 1997             http://www.commandprompt.com/

Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
PostgreSQL Replication: http://www.commandprompt.com/products/