Thread: Storage Inefficiency In PostgreSQL
Hi , We are currently contemplating switching from MySQL to PostgreSQL, the main attraction being the use of the TimescaleDB extension. Having done much of the ground investigation there is one area of significant concern - the storage requirement of PostgreSQL. Put simply, comparing like for like for a set of tables, PostgreSQL consumes far more storage space than MySQL: - MySQL (5.6): 156 MB - PostgreSQL (11.2): 246 MB - PostgreSQL + TimescaleDB (partitioned/chunked data): 324 MB I've also submitted this in stackoverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55655272/how-to-reduce-postgresql-databa se-size. I can rearrange the table/column-alignment to save 6 bytes per row of the main table, with a saving of a few mega-bytes. Not enough to make any real difference. Does anyone know: - Why PostgreSQL is so storage inefficient in comparison? - What existing methods can be used to reduce the storage consumption (I've already tried realignment and vacuum full)? - Are there any plans to address this storage consumption inefficiency (in comparison to MySQL) problem? Many thanks, sps-ray --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
On Mon, Apr 15, 2019 at 10:43 AM Ray Cheung <ray.cheung@silverpowersystems.com> wrote:
Hi ,
We are currently contemplating switching from MySQL to PostgreSQL, the main
attraction being the use of the TimescaleDB extension. Having done much of
the ground investigation there is one area of significant concern - the
storage requirement of PostgreSQL. Put simply, comparing like for like for a
set of tables, PostgreSQL consumes far more storage space than MySQL:
- MySQL (5.6): 156 MB
- PostgreSQL (11.2): 246 MB
- PostgreSQL + TimescaleDB (partitioned/chunked data): 324 MB
I've also submitted this in stackoverflow:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55655272/how-to-reduce-postgresql-databa
se-size.
I can rearrange the table/column-alignment to save 6 bytes per row of the
main table, with a saving of a few mega-bytes. Not enough to make any real
difference. Does anyone know:
- Why PostgreSQL is so storage inefficient in comparison?
The storage strategies are different enough you can't really assume direct comparisons.
Long story short, iMySQL is optimized for two things: primary key lookups, and reducing disk I/O from updates to heavily indexed tables.
PostgreSQL is optimized for a lot of things, including access through secondary indexes and sequential scans. This means that both tables and indexes are structured differently.
- What existing methods can be used to reduce the storage consumption (I've
already tried realignment and vacuum full)?
You could take a look at extensions that give you foreign data wrappers for columnar stores, but note this has a number of important tradeoffs in performance and is not recommended for OLTP systems. However if space is your primary concern, I would assume you are trying to set up some sort of OLAP system?
- Are there any plans to address this storage consumption inefficiency (in
comparison to MySQL) problem?
Long run pluggable storage should give people a different set of options and choices to make here.
Many thanks,
sps-ray
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Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
Efficito: Hosted Accounting and ERP. Robust and Flexible. No vendor lock-in.
we were able to use a brin index for our time-series data and that saved a lot of space. basically, we used a btree for recent data and, once the data was "stable", reclustered the data to get high correlation on the brin index, created a brin index and dropped the btree. it works well. On 4/15/2019 1:42 AM, Ray Cheung wrote: > Hi , > > We are currently contemplating switching from MySQL to PostgreSQL, the main > attraction being the use of the TimescaleDB extension. Having done much of > the ground investigation there is one area of significant concern - the > storage requirement of PostgreSQL. Put simply, comparing like for like for a > set of tables, PostgreSQL consumes far more storage space than MySQL: > > - MySQL (5.6): 156 MB > - PostgreSQL (11.2): 246 MB > - PostgreSQL + TimescaleDB (partitioned/chunked data): 324 MB > > I've also submitted this in stackoverflow: > https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55655272/how-to-reduce-postgresql-databa > se-size. > > I can rearrange the table/column-alignment to save 6 bytes per row of the > main table, with a saving of a few mega-bytes. Not enough to make any real > difference. Does anyone know: > > - Why PostgreSQL is so storage inefficient in comparison? > - What existing methods can be used to reduce the storage consumption (I've > already tried realignment and vacuum full)? > - Are there any plans to address this storage consumption inefficiency (in > comparison to MySQL) problem? > > Many thanks, > > sps-ray > > > --- > This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. > https://www.avast.com/antivirus > > >