Multiple Spindles ( Was: Re: [HACKERS] [hackers]development suggestion needed )

On Thu, 13 Jan 2000, Don Baccus wrote:

> My site's still in the experimental stage, being used by a couple
> dozen folks to record bird distribution data in the Pacific NW, so
> I don't personally have real-world data to get a feeling for how
> important this might become.  Still, Oracle DBA docs talk a lot
> about it so in some real-world scenarios being able to distribute
> tables and indices on different spindles must pay off.

What would it take to break the data/base/<database> directory down?  To
something like, maybe:

data/base/<database>/pg_*                   /tables/*                   /indices/*

Then, one could easily mount a drive as /tables and another one as
/indices ...

We know the difference between a table and an index, so I wouldn't think
it would be *too* hard add /tables/ internally to the existing
path...would it?

You'd basically have somethign like:

sprintf("%s/data/base/%s/tables/%s", data_dir, database, tablename);

Instead of:

sprintf("%s/data/base/%s/%s", data_dir, database, tablename);

I know, I'm being simplistic here, but...

Or, a different way:

if(table) sprintf("%s/data/base/table/%s/%s", data_dir,database,tablename);
else if(index) sprintf("%s/data/base/index/%s/%s", data_dir,database,tablename);
else sprintf("%s/data/base/sys/%s/%s", data_dir,database,sysfile);

This would give you the ability to put all table from all databass onto
one file system, and all indexes onto another, and all system files onto a
third...

I don't know, I'm oversimplying and spewing thoughts out
again...but...*shrug*

Marc G. Fournier                   ICQ#7615664               IRC Nick: Scrappy
Systems Administrator @ hub.org 
primary: scrappy@hub.org           secondary: scrappy@{freebsd|postgresql}.org