Re: PostgreSQL 8.4 performance tuning questions - Mailing list pgsql-performance

From Tom Lane
Subject Re: PostgreSQL 8.4 performance tuning questions
Date
Msg-id 5085.1248993020@sss.pgh.pa.us
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: PostgreSQL 8.4 performance tuning questions  (Scott Carey <scott@richrelevance.com>)
Responses Re: PostgreSQL 8.4 performance tuning questions  (Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu>)
List pgsql-performance
Scott Carey <scott@richrelevance.com> writes:
> On 7/30/09 2:53 PM, "Tom Lane" <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>> Scott Carey <scott@richrelevance.com> writes:
>>> Gzip does have some quirky performance behavior depending on the chunk size
>>> of data you stream into it.
>>
>> Can you enlarge on that comment?  I'm not sure that pg_dump is aware
>> that there's anything to worry about there.

> For whatever reason, some other internals of gzip tend to perform much
> better if submitting say, 4k or 8k or 16k chunks rather than little bits at
> a time.  But I'm sure some of that also depends on what library you're using
> since they all vary somewhat.

AFAIK there is only one widely-used implementation of zlib, and it
hasn't changed much in a long time.

I did some tracing and verified that pg_dump passes data to deflate()
one table row at a time.  I'm not sure about the performance
implications of that, but it does seem like it might be something to
look into.

            regards, tom lane

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