Re: pgbench questions

[Cc:ed to hackers]

From: nconway(at)klamath(dot)dyndns(dot)org (Neil Conway)
Subject: pgbench questions
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2002 00:57:37 -0400
Message-ID: <20020713045736(dot)GA9258(at)klamath(dot)dyndns(dot)org>

> Hi,
>
> I was looking at doing some performance profiling on PostgreSQL, and
> I had a few questions on pgbench.
>
> (1) Is there a reason you chose to use the TPC-B benchmark rather
> than TPC-C or TPC-H, for example? Do you think there might be any
> merit in converting pgbench to use TPC-H or AS3AP?

Just easy to implement. Ideally pgbench should be able handle to
several kinds of benchmarks (I don't have time to do that sigh...)

BTW, TPC-H is very different from othe benchmarks. As far as I know,
it focuses on Data Ware House. So TPC-H cannot be a replacement for
TPC-B.

> (2) At least in the current CVS version, the code to do a 'CHECKPOINT'
> after creating a table has been #ifdef'ed out. Why is that?

That is not after creation of a table, but while creating it, which is
not necessary any more since Tom has fix the growth of WAL logs.

> (3) Several people (Rod Taylor, Tom Lane, myself, perhaps others) have
> noticed that the results obtained from pgbench can be somewhat
> inconsistent (i.e. can vary between runs quite a bit).
>
> Have you found this to be the case in your own experience?
>
> Do you have any suggestions on how pgbench can be made more
> consistent (either through special benchmarking procedures, or
> through a change to pgbench)

I believe it's a common problem with benchmark programs. I think Tom
or Jan has posted a good summary to hackers list showing how to get
a consistent result with pgbench.
--
Tatsuo Ishii