Scott Marlowe wrote:
On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 5:03 PM, John Huttley <John@mib-infotech.co.nz> wrote:
Hi Andrew,
There are two problems.
The first is the that if there is a table with a index and an update is
performed on a non indexed field,
the index is still re indexed.
I assume you mean updated, not reindexed, as reindexed has a different
meaning as regards postgresql. Also, this is no longer true as of
version 8.3. If you're updating non-indexed fields a lot and you're
not running 8.3 you are doing yourself a huge disservice.
Yes sorry, I mean all indexes are updated even when the updated field is not indexed.
I'm running 8.3.3
this is part of the trade-offs of MVCC.
was... was a part of the trade-offs.
You are thinking of HOT?
I don't think it applies in the case of full table updates??
We should reasonably expect that the total amount of IO will go up, over a
non-indexed table.
The second thing is that the disk IO throughput goes way down.
This is not an issue with MVCC, as such, except that it exposes the effect
of a write to an indexed field.
It's really an effect of parallel updates / writes / accesses, and is
always an issue for a database running on a poor storage subsystem. A
db with a two drive mirror set is always going to be at a disadvantage
to one running on a dozen or so drives in a RAID-10
Oh well, I'm forever going to be disadvantaged.
