Re: "set nice" running a transaction in a lower priority? - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Tom Lane
Subject Re: "set nice" running a transaction in a lower priority?
Date
Msg-id 18702.1023973786@sss.pgh.pa.us
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: "set nice" running a transaction in a lower priority?  (Richard Huxton <dev@archonet.com>)
Responses Re: "set nice" running a transaction in a lower priority?
List pgsql-general
Richard Huxton <dev@archonet.com> writes:
> On Wednesday 12 Jun 2002 6:33 pm, Clark C . Evans wrote:
>> I was wondering if there is a way to set transaction
>> priority so that it takes its good sweet time and
>> handles other queries quickly?

> Not really - and it might be counter-productive to slow down the import. If
> another transaction can't complete until the import is finished then
> everything could end up delayed.

> I guess you could nice the pid of the relevant backend process,

That would be a bad idea for the same reason --- you'd get into
priority-inversion scenarios where foreground processes are waiting for
the low-priority process, which can't run because other foreground
processes are hogging all the CPU.

> but I'd be
> inclined to batch the import into sections of 5000 records or so and sleep
> for a second between batches.

Some kind of throttle on the client side seems like a better idea to me
too.

            regards, tom lane

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