RE: [HACKERS] Happy column dropping - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Peter Eisentraut
Subject RE: [HACKERS] Happy column dropping
Date
Msg-id Pine.LNX.4.21.0001242145450.525-100000@localhost.localdomain
Whole thread Raw
In response to RE: [HACKERS] Happy column dropping  ("Hiroshi Inoue" <Inoue@tpf.co.jp>)
Responses RE: [HACKERS] Happy column dropping
List pgsql-hackers
On 2000-01-23, Hiroshi Inoue mentioned:

> Anyway I have 2 basic questions.
> 
> 1) Is the * 2x disk usage *  implementation really needed ?

Yes, unless you bypass all transaction logic and do a get a row, change
the row, delete the old row, write the new row, and silently hope that no
problems come up down the line. If you do an SQL update of all the rows in
a 10GB table you temporarily need 20GB in case there is a rollback.

> 2) Why rename() ?
>     I don't trust rename() at all in transaction control.
>     The first thing we should do it to change relname -> relation file
>     name mapping in order to avoid calling rename(). 

That's a good point. The alter table / rename code makes free use of this,
which is just waiting to kick somebody in the head. If you think this
could be addressed in the next release, I'm even for dropping my
business and wait for a cleaner solution.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut                  Sernanders väg 10:115
peter_e@gmx.net                   75262 Uppsala
http://yi.org/peter-e/            Sweden





pgsql-hackers by date:

Previous
From: Peter Eisentraut
Date:
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] psql updates
Next
From: Peter Eisentraut
Date:
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Happy column dropping