Re: autovacuum not prioritising for-wraparound tables

On 1/30/13 3:28 PM, Kevin Grittner wrote:
> Jim Nasby <jim@nasby.net> wrote:

>> then the *ideal* time to start a freeze vacuum on a table is so
>> that the vacuum would end *exactly* as we were about to hit XID
>> wrap.
>
> For a tuple which you know is going to survive long enough to be
> frozen, the *ideal* time to freeze a tuple, from a performance
> standpoint, is when the tuple is written, to eliminate a separate
> WAL-log operation.  The *next best* time to freeze is when the hint
> bits are set, to avoid a separate page write.  If you are doing
> differential backups, the *third best* time to freeze is before the
> first differential backup of the tuple, to avoid a separate backup
> after the freeze.  And so on.

Yeah, I hadn't considered that aspect, but I think that's a separate 
discussion. I agree that there are many cases where we would benefit 
from freezing early, and those should all help reduce the impact of 
XID-wrap induced freezing.

Even if we do introduce "up-front" freezing, we still need to deal with 
all the other cases though, which in the worst case means avoiding the 
XID wrap. I believe that particular case (as well as the whole autovac 
priority question) would be best served by looking at 1st and 2nd order 
derivatives.