Re: Postgresql Automatic vacuum

On 23 Sep 2002 at 13:28, Matthew T. O'Connor wrote:

> On Monday 23 September 2002 09:43 am, Shridhar Daithankar wrote:
> > Hello All,
> >
> > I have written a small daemon that can automatically vacuum PostgreSQL
> > database, depending upon activity per table.
>
> Hello Shridhar, sorry I didn't respond to the email you sent me a while back.
> Anyway, I saw this post, and just started taking a look a it. I wasn't
> thinking of doing this as a totally separate executable / code base, but
> perhaps that has advantages I need to think more.
>
> A couple of quick questions, you are using C++, but all postgres source code
> is in C, do you want this to eventually be included as part of the postgres
> distribution? If so, I think that C might be a better choice.

Well, I wrote it in C++ because I like it. I have lost habit of writing pure C
code. Nothing else.

As far as getting into base postgresql distro. I don't mind it rewriting but I
have some reservations.

1) As it is postgresql source code is huge. Adding functions to it which
directly taps into it's nervous system e.g. cache, would take far more time to
perfect in all conditions.

My application as it is is an external client app. It enjoys all the isolation
provided by postgresql. Besides this is a low priority functionality at
runtime, unlike real time replication. It would rarely matter it vacuum is
triggered after 6 seconds instead of configuerd 5 seconds, for example.

Less code, less bugs is my thinking.

I wanted this functionality out fast. I didn't want to invest in learning
postgresql source code because I didn't have time. So I wrote a separate app.
Besides it would run on all previous postgresql versions which supports
statistics collection. That's a huge plus if you ask me.

2) Consider this. No other database offers built in tool to clean the things.
Is it that nobody needs it? No everybody needs it. And then you end up cleaning
database by taking it down.

If people take for granted that postgresql does not need manual cleaning, by
deploying apps. like pgavd, vacuum will be a big feature of postgres. Clean the
database without taking it down..

> I will play with it more and give you some more feedback.

Awaiting that.

I am Cc'ing this to Hackers because I am sure some people might have same
doubts.
Bye
Shridhar

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