Re: tackling full page writes

On 05/24/2011 04:34 PM, Robert Haas wrote:
> we could name this feature "partial full page writes" and enable it
> either with a setting of full_page_writes=partial

+1 to overloading the initial name, but only if the parameter is named 
'maybe', 'sometimes', or 'perhaps'.

I've been looking into a similar refactoring of the names here, where we 
bundle all of these speed over safety things (fsync, full_page_writes, 
etc.) into one control so they're easier to turn off at once.  Not sure 
if it should be named "web_scale" or "do_you_feel_lucky_punk".

> 3. Going a bit further, Greg proposed the idea of ripping out our
> current WAL infrastructure altogether and instead just having one WAL
> record that says "these byte ranges on this page changed to have these
> new contents".

The main thing that makes this idea particularly interesting to me, over 
the other two, is that it might translate well into the idea of using 
sync_file_range to aim for a finer fsync call on Linux than is currently 
possible.

-- 
Greg Smith   2ndQuadrant US    greg@2ndQuadrant.com   Baltimore, MD
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