Re: BUG #5722: vacuum full does not update last_vacuum statistics

Tom Lane wrote:
> Jochen Erwied <jochen(at)pgsql(dot)erwied(dot)eu> writes:
> > Monday, October 25, 2010, 4:12:39 PM you wrote:
> >> "Jochen Erwied" <jochen(at)pgsql(dot)erwied(dot)eu> writes:
> >>> VACUUM FULL does not update statistics so display of pg_stat_user_tables is
> >>> wrong. A normal VACUUM updates the relevant information.
>
> >> Hmm. This is a definitional issue: what do we really mean by last_vacuum?
> >> I'm inclined to think that the current behavior is reasonable. VACUUM
> >> FULL is (still) not intended as a routine maintenance operation, and
> >> the point of that column is to track routine maintenance operations.
>
> > Well, when reading
> > http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/monitoring-stats.html
> > then last_vacuum contains the last time of a user-initiated vacuum. There's
> > no distinction made what kind of vacuum was made. And IMHO even if VACUUM
> > FULL isn't meant for routine vacuuming, the state should be changed.
>
> Perhaps. The new implementation of VACUUM FULL is really more like a
> CLUSTER, or one of the rewriting variants of ALTER TABLE. Should all
> of those operations result in an update of last_vacuum? From an
> implementation standpoint it's difficult to say that only some of them
> should, because all of them result in a table that has no immediate
> need for vacuuming. The only argument I can see for having only VACUUM
> FULL update the timestamp is that it's called VACUUM and the others
> aren't. Which is an argument, but not a terribly impressive one IMO.
>
> > Of course the easiest way to fix this bug (or better flaw) is to change the
> > documentation :-)
>
> Yeah, that part of the docs will require editing no matter what we do.
> I'm just trying to get some clarity on what the most reasonable behavior
> is.

I have updated the documentation to say that vacuum statistics and
counts are for non-FULL vacuums; applied patch attached.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

+ It's impossible for everything to be true. +