Re: Autovacuum in the backend

On Fri, 2005-06-17 at 00:03 -0700, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> Matthew T. O'Connor wrote:
> > Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> >
> >> Just my own two cents. First I am not knocking the work that has been
> >> on autovacuum. I am sure that it was a leap on its own to get it to
> >> work. However I will say that I just don't see the reason for it.
> >
> >
> >
> > The major reasons for autovacuum as I see it are as follows:
> >
> > * Reduces administrative overhead having to keep track of what tables
> > need to be vacuumed how often.
>
> Creates more overhead and thus reduces performance.

Agreed, except I have a number of tables that are over scheduled with
cron because about once a week (at a random time) they do go through
heavy enough churn to require the more frequent vacuum, but the rest of
the time they're fairly quiet. It's not ideal, but autovacuum was the
difference between a 10 minute vacuum 24/7, or a 10 minute vacuum on the
table for the heavy 2 or so hours which randomly appear.

In the case of unexpected or uneven loads, cron isn't particularly
useful.

--