Re: Quality and Performance

Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 17:32:49 +0000
> Simon Riggs <simon(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
>
>
> > Maybe we should give each Beta a name, such as "Initial Beta",
> > "Performance Beta", "Usability Beta" as a way of encouraging folk to
> > focus onto particular aspects of quality at what we consider to be
> > appropriate times to do so. Not sure whether thats a good idea, but
> > I'd love to hear about ways to include performance as one of the
> > essential behaviours of PostgreSQL.
>
> Well I think that we do take performance into account. I agree
> that we should *never* have a regression in performance from release
> to release, which is what I believe has inspired this thread.

Hmm. I have developed several features that have driven performance
down. Autovacuum enabled by default for one. IIRC the SELECT FOR SHARE
stuff (tuple-level share locks) also hurt performance. Savepoints
required enlarging tuple headers, which also hurt performance.

In all cases we have gotten some other benefit, be it reduced
administrative pain, or reduced lock contention, or a new feature.

(In fact I think most performance drops have been my fault.)

--
Alvaro Herrera http://www.advogato.org/person/alvherre
"Some men are heterosexual, and some are bisexual, and some
men don't think about sex at all... they become lawyers" (Woody Allen)