Re: Compression and on-disk sorting - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Tom Lane
Subject Re: Compression and on-disk sorting
Date
Msg-id 15446.1147838595@sss.pgh.pa.us
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Compression and on-disk sorting  (Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu>)
Responses Re: Compression and on-disk sorting
List pgsql-hackers
Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu> writes:
> Andrew Piskorski <atp@piskorski.com> writes:
>> A corrolary of that is forget compression schemes like gzip - it
>> reduces data size nicely but is far too slow on the cpu to be
>> particularly useful in improving overall throughput rates.

> There are some very fast decompression algorithms:

AFAICS the only sane choice here is to use
src/backend/utils/adt/pg_lzcompress.c, on the grounds that (1) it's
already in the backend, and (2) data compression in general is such a
minefield of patents that we'd be foolish to expose ourselves in more
than one direction.

Certainly, if you can't prototype a convincing performance win using
that algorithm, it's unlikely to be worth anyone's time to look harder.
        regards, tom lane


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