Re: extending relations more efficiently

On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 3:08 PM, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:

> We've previously discussed the possible desirability of extending
> relations in larger increments, rather than one block at a time, for
> performance reasons.  I attempted to determine how much performance we
> could possibly buy this way, and found that, as far as I can see, the
> answer is, basically, none.

Fair enough, but my understanding was that tests showed that the
extension lock was a bottleneck, so doing extensions in larger chunks
should reduce the time we spend waiting for a lock and thus improve
performance. So while your results here show no gain, there is gain to
be had elsewhere as a result.

The algorithm needs to be adaptive, so we don't waste space on smaller
tables or lower loads.

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 Simon Riggs                   http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
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