Re: Re: [COMMITTERS] Can not create more than 32766 databases in ufs file system. - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

On 09/12/2009 03:33 PM, Stephen Frost wrote:
> * Mark Mielke (mark@mark.mielke.cc) wrote:
>    
>> No matter what scheme PostgreSQL uses for storing the data, there can be
>> underlying file system limitations.
>>      
> This is true, but there's a reason we only create 1GB files too.  I
> wouldn't be against a scheme such as described to minimize the impact to
> PG of these limitations.
>    

Ok - but "minimizing the impact" does not necessarily mean "keep doing 
what we are doing, but work around the issue." One interpretation of the 
problem is that the problem is that PostgreSQL is trying to use too many 
sub-directories in the same containing directory. I would argue that the 
problem is that PostgreSQL requires so many sub-directories in the first 
place.

There are many database designs that do not require one file per 
database. Berkeley DB JE, for instance, treats each "database" as one 
root in a larger tree. The entire database is stored in one set of 
files, where the files are created due to database volume, not database 
quantity. Tables can be thought of similarly.

>> There are many ways PostgreSQL could work around this problem - your
>> suggestion of using sub-directories being one of them - but what happens
>> if this causes performance degradation for existing users, due to the
>> extra file system lookups required on every access?
>>      
> Ehhh, it's likely to be cached..  Sounds like a stretch to me that this
> would actually be a performance hit.  If it turns out to really be one,
> we could just wait to move to subdirectories until some threshold (eg-
> 30k) is hit.
>    

Cached does not eliminate the cost. It just means it doesn't have to go 
to disk. It still needs to traverse an additional level of the VFS tree. 
Sure, this is designed to be cheap - but this avoids the real cost from 
consideration - that of having so many subdirectories in the first place.

>> Another solution would be to store everything in the same file.
>>      
> eh?
>    

There is no technical requirement for PostgreSQL to separate data in 
databases or tables on subdirectory or file boundaries. Nothing wrong 
with having one or more large files that contain everything. PostgreSQL 
doesn't happen to do this today - but it's bothered me at times that it 
has so many files in the database directory - even very small tables 
require their own files.

>> In any case, I think this would be a significant architecture change for
>> something that sounds like a bad idea. I would expect having 32k
>> databases to have significant performance degradations in other ways.
>>      
> Actually, I think some of the changes to remove flatfiles might improve
> our performance with large numbers of databases.  I also don't see how
> this would be a significant architecture change at all.  If there are
> still issues that make having lots of databases slow, we might want to
> look into fixing those issues rather than saying "well, just don't do
> that".
>    

I guess I'm not seeing how using 32k tables is a sensible model. So yes, 
things can be done to reduce the cost - but it seems like something is 
wrong if this is truly a requirement. There are alternative models of 
storage that would not require 32k tables, that likely perform better. 
Although, I don't know your requirements, so perhaps I am missing something.

>> In
>> particular, I am thinking about having to open a file descriptor for
>> each of these files. What sort of database architecture requires 32k
>> databases or tables for the same PostgreSQL instance? Have you
>> considered having an additional field for your primary key and combining
>> several tables into one?
>>      
> I've got a ton of instances that have>32K tables.  My approach is
> generally to keep the number of databases low, while having lots of
> schemas, but there are distinct downsides to that (specifically related
> to hiding information..  something alot of people care about, but
> thankfully I don't have to).
>    

Do you agree with me that having 32k open file descriptors (or worse, 
open on demand file descriptors that need to be re-opened many times) is 
a problem?

Looking at PostgreSQL today - I don't think it's designed to scale to 
this. Looking at SQL today, I think I would find it difficult to justify 
creating a solution that requires this capability.

Honestly - it seems a bit insane. Sorry. :-) Maybe I'm just naive...

Cheers,
mark

-- 
Mark Mielke<mark@mielke.cc>