Re: Frequently updated tables - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Alvaro Herrera
Subject Re: Frequently updated tables
Date
Msg-id 20040609183623.GB7582@dcc.uchile.cl
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Frequently updated tables  (pgsql@mohawksoft.com)
List pgsql-hackers
On Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 01:41:27PM -0400, pgsql@mohawksoft.com wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 10:49:20PM +0800, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:

> > Also he said that the problem was solved with enough lazy VACUUM
> > scheduling.  I don't understand why he doesn't want to use that
> > solution.
> 
> Sigh, because vacuums take away from performance. Imagine a table that has
> to be updated on the order of a few thousand times a minute. Think about
> the drop in performance during the vacuum.
> 
> On a one row table, vacuum is not so bad, but try some benchmarks on a
> table with a goodly number of rows.

Hmm, this can be a problem if VACUUM pollutes the shared buffer pool.
So what about a new buffer replacement policy that takes this into
account and is not fooled by VACUUM?  This is already implemented in
7.5.  Also, how about a background writer process that writes dirty
buffers so that backends don't have to wait for IO to complete when a
dirty buffer has to be written?  This is also in current CVS.


Have you tried and measured how the current CVS code performs?  Jan
Wieck reported a lot of performance improvement some time ago while he
was developing this.  The code has changed since and I have not seen any
measurement.

-- 
Alvaro Herrera (<alvherre[a]dcc.uchile.cl>)
Oh, oh, las chicas galacianas, lo harán por las perlas,
¡Y las de Arrakis por el agua! Pero si buscas damas
Que se consuman como llamas, ¡Prueba una hija de Caladan! (Gurney Halleck)



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