Re: How to make lazy VACUUM of one table run in several

On E, 2005-04-25 at 11:11 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)dcc(dot)uchile(dot)cl> writes:
> > On Sun, Apr 24, 2005 at 12:02:37PM +0300, Hannu Krosing wrote:
> >> Must some locks also be released an reaquired inside this loop, or is
> >> there something else I should keep in mind when trying to do this ?
>
> > There is "session lock" on the table. You must release that.
>
> Actually, the only hope of making this work is NOT to release that.
> If you hold the appropriate lock at the session level then it is
> reasonable to consider successive transactions within the vacuum
> as being one big operation.
>
> I think the major issue with this would be memory management, ie,
> how to prevent CommitTransactionCommand from cleaning up all of
> vacuum's working state.

Are there any known (easy :) tricks for achieving this ?

Now that I have had time to look a little more at this I have another
idea:

Could I avoid having a transaction at all?

As VACUUM is not "transactional" in the sense that it does not change
anything visible to users ever, can't be undone by rollback, etc... ,
could it be possible to create enough "transaction-like" environment for
it to really run outside of transactions. Perhaps just advancing
oldestXmin at certain intervals ?

--
Hannu Krosing <hannu(at)tm(dot)ee>