Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-18 Thread Simon Riggs
On Thu, 2006-09-14 at 14:16 -0400, Tom Lane wrote: 
 Stefan Kaltenbrunner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  Point I want to make is - all those are cool features(and might be
  critical for some) but I don't think they warrant a dramatic change in
  the release cycle policy ...
 
 Any release is going to have some things that are compelling and some
 that aren't, for any particular person ... it's just that those things
 vary depending on who you are ...
 
 I was heard to gripe not long ago that feature freeze during August was
 bad timing.  It would be interesting to try to do it during the spring
 instead, just to see if people have more free time then.  So for me,
 +1 for a shorter-than-a-year cycle this time, independently of what
 features make it or don't.

July 1 or Aug 1 as the *real* date has always been a problem for me. My
kids will be on vacation from school at that time for a few years yet.

I'd vote for a date in mid-May, when nobody is on holiday and lots of
people are available for 6-8 weeks after Feature Freeze. Specific
suggestion: 2nd Monday in May, which falls 14 May in 2007.

8.1 was a short release. If we make 8.3 a short release also, we may as
well say the release cycle is 18 months not 12. Seems like we spend a
lot of time releasing if we do it that way. :-(

If 8.3 is a short release, I would hope that it happens as a permanent
move to the new time-of-year, so we can get back to 12 month release
cycles (which I like).

I'd like to get some clarity on those dates as soon as possible, if they
are significantly earlier than May. EDB is planning some major work, so
need to see whether those projects are 8.3 or 8.4 timescale.

Whatever the date, I'd like to suggest we have 2 sync points a year, not
one. Sync point meaning where we clear the patch queue and consolidate,
but don't go through the whole release process. That way we won't get
this stupidly busy period where Bruce and Tom go into overdrive while
everyone else waits before they begin next developments. Checkpoints are
a performance issue, as we know. Right now, you can only start big
projects once each year and whichever way you cut it, 8.4 is a long way
off yet.

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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-18 Thread Bruce Momjian
Simon Riggs wrote:
 I'd like to get some clarity on those dates as soon as possible, if they
 are significantly earlier than May. EDB is planning some major work, so
 need to see whether those projects are 8.3 or 8.4 timescale.
 
 Whatever the date, I'd like to suggest we have 2 sync points a year, not
 one. Sync point meaning where we clear the patch queue and consolidate,
 but don't go through the whole release process. That way we won't get
 this stupidly busy period where Bruce and Tom go into overdrive while
 everyone else waits before they begin next developments. Checkpoints are
 a performance issue, as we know. Right now, you can only start big
 projects once each year and whichever way you cut it, 8.4 is a long way
 off yet.

My guess is that 8.3 will be about at long as 8.2 unless a huge number
of must-have features appear early in 8.3, and we will not know that for
months.

-- 
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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-17 Thread Jim Nasby

On Sep 16, 2006, at 9:31 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

Jim C. Nasby [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Then we should change autovacuum so that it stays out of the way when
tables are being vacuumed frequently enough via an external means.


What makes you think it doesn't do that already?  Of course, it has  
its

own ideas about what frequently enough is, but it won't re-vacuum a
table that's been vacuumed within that interval.


Oh, I'd forgotten that autovac looked at manual vacuums too.


While I personally don't really want autovac on in my development
environment, I find it hard to deny the argument that it ought to be
on by default.  If you know enough to set up a cron job to do your own
vacuuming schedule, you *certainly* know enough to turn off autovac
if you don't want it, or better dial it down to the point where it's
just an emergency backstop for your cron job.  If you don't know  
enough

to turn off autovac, then you need it on.


And while we're certainly not MS Access, it's worthwhile to make  
things easy for newbies when it doesn't get in the way of the pros.  
It's certainly not hard to disable autovac, and anyone who's actually  
tuning an install is going to be tweaking stuff in postgresql.conf  
anyway...

--
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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-16 Thread Tom Dunstan

Joshua D. Drake wrote:
O.k. that was negative, sorry. Frankly I think that turning autovacuum 
on by default pretty much equates to, I am lazy, and I don't want to 
actually evaluate my needs. Lets just go with MS Access


Please ignore my negativity today. I apologize. I do not want autovacuum 
turned on by default but it isn't that big of a deal.


Dammit, I was halfway through a brilliant rebuttal! I'm going to post it 
anyway, since I think it's important to discuss the issues if we're 
going to make the right call. Your repented negativity is noted, though. :)


I can definitely see where you're coming from, it's a sort of tough-love 
scenario. There are legitimate counter arguments, though. The most 
obvious is that anyone who *does* evaluate their needs properly 
shouldn't have too much trouble turning it off, whereas there are lots 
of small database users out there who find having to set up a vacuum 
cron a pain. Example: I'm in the process of setting up a typo blog, 
using postgresql of course, but the database setup was secondary to the 
main thing that I was doing, and I'd completely forgotten about setting 
up a cron. Now I'm unlikely to produce blog posts at a rate that will 
cause the database to grow out of the minuscule range, but it should 
still be done, right?


I have to ask, what's wrong with lazy users? Software which allows you 
to be lazy gives you a warm tingly feeling, and you install it on your 
intranet server when no-one's looking. We want people to think of 
postgresql that way.


There are lots of MySQL specific pieces of software out there that 
started out as some guy/girl with a PHP and MySQL type of book. We can't 
turn that clock back, but making postgresql easier for the masses has to 
be a good thing for its adoption. The native win32 port is the poster 
child for this. It was a big PR win, no?


I would argue that leaving autovacuum off is only justifiable if we feel 
that it's going to be a bad choice for the majority of users. Many of 
the users who frequent postgresql lists understand the trade-off, but 
the ones that we're trying to attract don't. Is it better for them to 
discover manual vacuums when they're trying to incrementally improve 
performance (with the risk that they never discover them at all), or 
when their database is running like a dog because they've never vacuumed 
it at all?


One solution might be to turn it on in turn-key solutions: linux distro 
RPMs, Win32 installer (is it on there already?) etc, but leave it turned 
off in the source release. Would that help you, or are your clients 
using RPMs or whatever?


Cheers

Tom


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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-16 Thread Jim C. Nasby
On Thu, Sep 14, 2006 at 02:36:22PM -0700, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
 But on a serious note, the problem I run into is exactly the opposite. 
 Someone will turn on autovacuum because they thought it was a good idea 
 and for their work load, it isn't. So instead of creating new and 
 interesting ways to allow their database to be more efficient, I am 
 dealing with snafu's created by my own community.
 
Then we should change autovacuum so that it stays out of the way when
tables are being vacuumed frequently enough via an external means.
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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-16 Thread Joshua D. Drake

Jim C. Nasby wrote:

On Thu, Sep 14, 2006 at 02:36:22PM -0700, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
But on a serious note, the problem I run into is exactly the opposite. 
Someone will turn on autovacuum because they thought it was a good idea 
and for their work load, it isn't. So instead of creating new and 
interesting ways to allow their database to be more efficient, I am 
dealing with snafu's created by my own community.
 
Then we should change autovacuum so that it stays out of the way when

tables are being vacuumed frequently enough via an external means.


ALTER TABLE foo DISABLE autovacuum? :)

Joshua D. Drake


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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-16 Thread Tom Lane
Jim C. Nasby [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 Then we should change autovacuum so that it stays out of the way when
 tables are being vacuumed frequently enough via an external means.

What makes you think it doesn't do that already?  Of course, it has its
own ideas about what frequently enough is, but it won't re-vacuum a
table that's been vacuumed within that interval.

While I personally don't really want autovac on in my development
environment, I find it hard to deny the argument that it ought to be
on by default.  If you know enough to set up a cron job to do your own
vacuuming schedule, you *certainly* know enough to turn off autovac
if you don't want it, or better dial it down to the point where it's
just an emergency backstop for your cron job.  If you don't know enough
to turn off autovac, then you need it on.

Also, as noted already, having autovac on by default will encourage the
developers to work out the remaining kinks in it ;-)

regards, tom lane

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[HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Joshua D. Drake

Hello,

I know that this would be completely out of the norm. However, would it 
be worth considering having a mid cycle release for 8.3?


Basically the release would focus on:

Updateable views
Bitmap indexes
Recursive queries

We would release in June?

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Stefan Kaltenbrunner
Joshua D. Drake wrote:
 Hello,
 
 I know that this would be completely out of the norm. However, would it
 be worth considering having a mid cycle release for 8.3?
 
 Basically the release would focus on:
 
 Updateable views
 Bitmap indexes
 Recursive queries
 
 We would release in June?

Interesting idea but we already have one of the fastest release cycles
of all database systems and some people would like to see a larger cycle.
In addition to that this plan might hold back some people from upgrading
to 8.2 which solves quite a few critical issues with features we
marketed/introduced during the past 8.x cycles and are really getting
polished and usable now (partitioning,pitr,...) and 8.2 gives quite a
nice performance boost for a lot of workloads too.

On a personal note - while those features might be nice to market for
some of use others would like to see very different things (like proper
encoding/character set/collation support or plan invalidation).
That might lead to a more that and this feature must be in based
release cycle which might not work out that well in practise ...

Stefan

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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Joshua D. Drake

Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote:

Joshua D. Drake wrote:

Hello,

I know that this would be completely out of the norm. However, would it
be worth considering having a mid cycle release for 8.3?

Basically the release would focus on:

Updateable views
Bitmap indexes
Recursive queries

We would release in June?


Interesting idea but we already have one of the fastest release cycles
of all database systems and some people would like to see a larger cycle.


I really don't care about other database systems. I care about 
postgresql :). That is also why I wanted to limit the features set 
specifically.



In addition to that this plan might hold back some people from upgrading
to 8.2 which solves quite a few critical issues with features we
marketed/introduced during the past 8.x cycles and are really getting
polished and usable now (partitioning,pitr,...) and 8.2 gives quite a
nice performance boost for a lot of workloads too.



I frankly won't see many people migrate to 8.2. Most of my customers 
will wait for 8.3 anyway. (except new business of course).



Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake



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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Stefan Kaltenbrunner
Joshua D. Drake wrote:
 Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote:
 Joshua D. Drake wrote:
 Hello,

 I know that this would be completely out of the norm. However, would it
 be worth considering having a mid cycle release for 8.3?

 Basically the release would focus on:

 Updateable views
 Bitmap indexes
 Recursive queries

 We would release in June?

 Interesting idea but we already have one of the fastest release cycles
 of all database systems and some people would like to see a larger cycle.
 
 I really don't care about other database systems. I care about
 postgresql :). That is also why I wanted to limit the features set
 specifically.

hmm yeah  but as I said - probably not everybody has an immediate demand
or is so fixated on those ..

 
 In addition to that this plan might hold back some people from upgrading
 to 8.2 which solves quite a few critical issues with features we
 marketed/introduced during the past 8.x cycles and are really getting
 polished and usable now (partitioning,pitr,...) and 8.2 gives quite a
 nice performance boost for a lot of workloads too.

 
 I frankly won't see many people migrate to 8.2. Most of my customers
 will wait for 8.3 anyway. (except new business of course).

I disagree - 8.2 is much more attractive for us then say 8.0 or 8.1 was
and we will probably adopt it rather aggressively ...


Stefan

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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Joshua D. Drake



In addition to that this plan might hold back some people from upgrading
to 8.2 which solves quite a few critical issues with features we
marketed/introduced during the past 8.x cycles and are really getting
polished and usable now (partitioning,pitr,...) and 8.2 gives quite a
nice performance boost for a lot of workloads too.


I frankly won't see many people migrate to 8.2. Most of my customers
will wait for 8.3 anyway. (except new business of course).


I disagree - 8.2 is much more attractive for us then say 8.0 or 8.1 was
and we will probably adopt it rather aggressively ...


That's why I said I frankly won't. I have customers with multi 
terrabyte datasets. 8.1 performs wonderfully for them. It would be a 
hard push to initiate an 8.2 outage for that.


Joshua D. Drake





Stefan

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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Stefan Kaltenbrunner
Joshua D. Drake wrote:
 
 In addition to that this plan might hold back some people from
 upgrading
 to 8.2 which solves quite a few critical issues with features we
 marketed/introduced during the past 8.x cycles and are really getting
 polished and usable now (partitioning,pitr,...) and 8.2 gives quite a
 nice performance boost for a lot of workloads too.

 I frankly won't see many people migrate to 8.2. Most of my customers
 will wait for 8.3 anyway. (except new business of course).

 I disagree - 8.2 is much more attractive for us then say 8.0 or 8.1 was
 and we will probably adopt it rather aggressively ...
 
 That's why I said I frankly won't. I have customers with multi
 terrabyte datasets. 8.1 performs wonderfully for them. It would be a
 hard push to initiate an 8.2 outage for that.

maybe - we have mostly OLTP style databases in the 2-3 figure gigabyte
range and none of the features you want to see an entire major release
done for would be a reason to upgrade for us.
Things  30% overall performance increase for a large set of queries (in
our apps) due to planner improvements and things like restartable
recovery and reduced dump  restore times (due to the sorting fixes)
however are :-)
Point I want to make is - all those are cool features(and might be
critical for some) but I don't think they warrant a dramatic change in
the release cycle policy ...


Stefan

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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Tom Lane
Stefan Kaltenbrunner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 Point I want to make is - all those are cool features(and might be
 critical for some) but I don't think they warrant a dramatic change in
 the release cycle policy ...

Any release is going to have some things that are compelling and some
that aren't, for any particular person ... it's just that those things
vary depending on who you are ...

I was heard to gripe not long ago that feature freeze during August was
bad timing.  It would be interesting to try to do it during the spring
instead, just to see if people have more free time then.  So for me,
+1 for a shorter-than-a-year cycle this time, independently of what
features make it or don't.

regards, tom lane

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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Stefan Kaltenbrunner
Tom Lane wrote:
 Stefan Kaltenbrunner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 Point I want to make is - all those are cool features(and might be
 critical for some) but I don't think they warrant a dramatic change in
 the release cycle policy ...
 
 Any release is going to have some things that are compelling and some
 that aren't, for any particular person ... it's just that those things
 vary depending on who you are ...

no doubt on that :-)

 
 I was heard to gripe not long ago that feature freeze during August was
 bad timing.  It would be interesting to try to do it during the spring
 instead, just to see if people have more free time then.  So for me,
 +1 for a shorter-than-a-year cycle this time, independently of what
 features make it or don't.

well that is something I can agree too - it is mostly the do a special
release for exactly those 3 features I don't like that much ...


Stefan

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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Joshua D. Drake

Tom Lane wrote:

Stefan Kaltenbrunner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Point I want to make is - all those are cool features(and might be
critical for some) but I don't think they warrant a dramatic change in
the release cycle policy ...


Any release is going to have some things that are compelling and some
that aren't, for any particular person ... it's just that those things
vary depending on who you are ...

I was heard to gripe not long ago that feature freeze during August was
bad timing.  It would be interesting to try to do it during the spring
instead, just to see if people have more free time then.  So for me,
+1 for a shorter-than-a-year cycle this time, independently of what
features make it or don't.


Well on that same vein (with a +1), I know that we lost at least 8 weeks 
of productivity from various vacations etc.. during the summer. When you 
incorporate everyone else that is involved with postgresql, I could 
easily see almost a full man year lost, by having freeze where it is now.


I think having a freeze more toward march/april makes a heck of a lot of 
sense.


Joshua D. Drake




regards, tom lane




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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Stephen Frost
* Joshua D. Drake ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
 Updateable views
 Bitmap indexes
 Recursive queries
 
 We would release in June?

Could we get autovacuum enabled by default too?

Thanks,

Stephen


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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Joshua D. Drake

Stephen Frost wrote:

* Joshua D. Drake ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:

Updateable views
Bitmap indexes
Recursive queries

We would release in June?


Could we get autovacuum enabled by default too?


I certainly hope not... I don't really feel like turning it off all the 
time.


Joshua D. Drake



Thanks,

Stephen



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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Stephen Frost
* Joshua D. Drake ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
 Stephen Frost wrote:
 * Joshua D. Drake ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
 Updateable views
 Bitmap indexes
 Recursive queries
 
 We would release in June?
 
 Could we get autovacuum enabled by default too?
 
 I certainly hope not... I don't really feel like turning it off all the 
 time.

The change had been put into CVS at one point as a pretty-much
agreed-upon thing to do, aiui.  It was removed mainly because it caused
problems for the regression tests which were enough that it was going to
take a while to fix them all so the change was postponed to 8.3...

Quite a few people (myself included) had really been hoping to see it in
8.2 and it's been the going-forward plan ever since autovacuum was put
into the backend (in fact, iirc, having it in the backend was a
prerequisite to having it on by default).

Thanks,

Stephen


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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Joshua D. Drake


Quite a few people (myself included) had really been hoping to see it in
8.2 and it's been the going-forward plan ever since autovacuum was put
into the backend (in fact, iirc, having it in the backend was a
prerequisite to having it on by default).


w00t, more processes doing things they shouldn't be doing, but doing 
them automatically at times when they shouldn't be done because of some 
arbitrary calculation that really isn't documented that well in some 
conf file!


O.k. that was negative, sorry. Frankly I think that turning autovacuum 
on by default pretty much equates to, I am lazy, and I don't want to 
actually evaluate my needs. Lets just go with MS Access


Joshua D. Drake




Thanks,

Stephen



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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Joshua D. Drake


O.k. that was negative, sorry. Frankly I think that turning autovacuum 
on by default pretty much equates to, I am lazy, and I don't want to 
actually evaluate my needs. Lets just go with MS Access


Please ignore my negativity today. I apologize. I do not want autovacuum 
turned on by default but it isn't that big of a deal.


Take care.

Joshua D. Drake




Joshua D. Drake




Thanks,

Stephen






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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Stephen Frost
* Joshua D. Drake ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
 w00t, more processes doing things they shouldn't be doing, but doing 
 them automatically at times when they shouldn't be done because of some 
 arbitrary calculation that really isn't documented that well in some 
 conf file!

I'd love for it to be improved.  If you've got specific suggestions on
improvments which could be made then please bring them up on the list.
In general I've been reasonably happy with it and it *is* improving as
people work on it.  Having it enabled by default may get more people
interested in improving it too.

 O.k. that was negative, sorry. Frankly I think that turning autovacuum 
 on by default pretty much equates to, I am lazy, and I don't want to 
 actually evaluate my needs. Lets just go with MS Access

It would be kind of nice to have internal database processes, you know,
handled *internally*.  While autovacuum might not be configured
perfectly for a given situation at the outset in the ideal world it
would be able to essentially self-configure itself over time.  There
have been ideas floated to get us closer to that such as the
dead-tuple (or dead-page?) list.

Unfortunately I'm not really keen on the we use MVCC internally, 
and MVCC needs it, therefore you as the admin have to deal with it
argument.

Thanks,

Stephen


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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Lukas Kahwe Smith

Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote:


Interesting idea but we already have one of the fastest release cycles
of all database systems and some people would like to see a larger cycle.


I think the key complaint is about how painful the upgrade process is 
and if you still get fixes for previous releases if you are not willing 
to make the big jump.


regards,
Lukas

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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Joshua D. Drake


No one would expect Oracle to install Oracle and walk away. We are not 
MySQL, nor MS Access.



I can definitely see where you're coming from, it's a sort of tough-love 
scenario. There are legitimate counter arguments, though. The most 
obvious is that anyone who *does* evaluate their needs properly 
shouldn't have too much trouble turning it off, whereas there are lots 
of small database users out there who find having to set up a vacuum 
cron a pain. Example: I'm in the process of setting up a typo blog, 
using postgresql of course, but the database setup was secondary to the 
main thing that I was doing, and I'd completely forgotten about setting 
up a cron. Now I'm unlikely to produce blog posts at a rate that will 
cause the database to grow out of the minuscule range, but it should 
still be done, right?


I have to ask, what's wrong with lazy users? Software which allows you 
to be lazy gives you a warm tingly feeling, and you install it on your 
intranet server when no-one's looking. We want people to think of 
postgresql that way.


There are lots of MySQL specific pieces of software out there that 
started out as some guy/girl with a PHP and MySQL type of book. We can't 
turn that clock back, but making postgresql easier for the masses has to 
be a good thing for its adoption. The native win32 port is the poster 
child for this. It was a big PR win, no?


I would argue that leaving autovacuum off is only justifiable if we feel 
that it's going to be a bad choice for the majority of users. Many of 
the users who frequent postgresql lists understand the trade-off, but 
the ones that we're trying to attract don't. Is it better for them to 
discover manual vacuums when they're trying to incrementally improve 
performance (with the risk that they never discover them at all), or 
when their database is running like a dog because they've never vacuumed 
it at all?


One solution might be to turn it on in turn-key solutions: linux distro 
RPMs, Win32 installer (is it on there already?) etc, but leave it turned 
off in the source release. Would that help you, or are your clients 
using RPMs or whatever?


Cheers

Tom




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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Alvaro Herrera
Joshua D. Drake wrote:
 
 No one would expect Oracle to install Oracle and walk away. We are not 
 MySQL, nor MS Access.

Then why are you complaining about having to disable autovacuum after
each installation?

It may just be me, but I see as a lot easier to disable autovacuum than
to write the necessary cron jobs if it's disabled.

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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Tom Dunstan

Joshua D. Drake wrote:


No one would expect Oracle to install Oracle and walk away. We are not 
MySQL, nor MS Access.


And thank goodness for that!

Tom


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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Joshua D. Drake

Tom Dunstan wrote:

Joshua D. Drake wrote:


No one would expect Oracle to install Oracle and walk away. We are not 
MySQL, nor MS Access.


And thank goodness for that!


Hah! I knew you would eventually agree with me. ;)

Joshua D. Drake



Tom


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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Joshua D. Drake

Alvaro Herrera wrote:

Joshua D. Drake wrote:
No one would expect Oracle to install Oracle and walk away. We are not 
MySQL, nor MS Access.


Then why are you complaining about having to disable autovacuum after
each installation?


Because my hands hurt and I can't find my gloves. My back hurts (see the 
previous post about 135mph car crash), I have a huge headache and I am 
in a generally pissy mood.


I am human, I am allowed :)

But on a serious note, the problem I run into is exactly the opposite. 
Someone will turn on autovacuum because they thought it was a good idea 
and for their work load, it isn't. So instead of creating new and 
interesting ways to allow their database to be more efficient, I am 
dealing with snafu's created by my own community.


Leaving autovacuum on will cement the idea that it *should* be on and 
IMHO it shouldn't without specific and careful planning.


Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake




It may just be me, but I see as a lot easier to disable autovacuum than
to write the necessary cron jobs if it's disabled.




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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Chris Browne
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Joshua D. Drake) writes:
 Leaving autovacuum on will cement the idea that it *should* be on and
 IMHO it shouldn't without specific and careful planning.

For the completely naive user, it seems to me that it *should* be
on, as that will diminish the number of questions that we need to
answer with Have you ever run VACUUM ANALYZE?
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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Robert Treat
On Thursday 14 September 2006 14:16, Tom Lane wrote:
 Stefan Kaltenbrunner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  Point I want to make is - all those are cool features(and might be
  critical for some) but I don't think they warrant a dramatic change in
  the release cycle policy ...

 Any release is going to have some things that are compelling and some
 that aren't, for any particular person ... it's just that those things
 vary depending on who you are ...

 I was heard to gripe not long ago that feature freeze during August was
 bad timing.  It would be interesting to try to do it during the spring
 instead, just to see if people have more free time then.  So for me,
 +1 for a shorter-than-a-year cycle this time, independently of what
 features make it or don't.


Any chance we could enforce a no changes to file formats on this extra-quick 
release?  Otherwise I have to agree with Joshua, I'll be recommending against 
upgrading to 8.2 on any significantly sized databases.

-- 
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Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Robert Treat
On Thursday 14 September 2006 17:36, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
 But on a serious note, the problem I run into is exactly the opposite.
 Someone will turn on autovacuum because they thought it was a good idea
 and for their work load, it isn't. So instead of creating new and
 interesting ways to allow their database to be more efficient, I am
 dealing with snafu's created by my own community.

 Leaving autovacuum on will cement the idea that it *should* be on and
 IMHO it shouldn't without specific and careful planning.


Clearly it's better to have auto-vacuum on than to do nothing, so why not give 
our users a better starting position if we can?  Otherwise why are we doing 
things like attempting to auto-set options in the conf file based on system 
specs?

-- 
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

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Re: [HACKERS] Mid cycle release?

2006-09-14 Thread Marc G. Fournier

On Thu, 14 Sep 2006, Joshua D. Drake wrote:

Well on that same vein (with a +1), I know that we lost at least 8 weeks 
of productivity from various vacations etc.. during the summer. When you 
incorporate everyone else that is involved with postgresql, I could 
easily see almost a full man year lost, by having freeze where it is 
now.


I think having a freeze more toward march/april makes a heck of a lot of 
sense.


Not against the idea ... would push more for March freeze though ... that 
way admins can plan for upgrades over their 'slow summer months' ... March 
would effectively look at a June 1st (-ish) release, so even a bit of a 
slip would still see it as the summer starts ...



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