Re: Idea for getting rid of VACUUM FREEZE on cold pages

On 6/2/2010 3:10 PM, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> Excerpts from Robert Haas's message of mié jun 02 14:16:33 -0400 2010:
>
>> We could, but I think we'd be better off just freezing at the time we
>> mark the page PD_ALL_VISIBLE and then using the visibility map for
>> both purposes. Keeping around the old xmin values after every tuple
>> on the page is visible to every running transaction is useful only for
>> forensics, and building a whole new freeze map just to retain that
>> information longer (and eventually force a massive anti-wraparound
>> vacuum) seems like overkill.
>
> Reducing the xid wraparound horizon "a bit" is reasonable, but moving it
> all the way forward to OldestXmin is a bit much, methinks.

Why?

>
> Besides, there's another argument for not freezing tuples immediately:
> they may be updated shortly thereafter, causing extra churn for no gain.

What extra churn does it create if the tuple can be frozen before the
bgwriter ever writes the page in the first place?

>
> I'd prefer a setting that would tell the system to freeze all tuples
> that fall within a safety range whenever any tuple in the page is frozen
> -- weren't you working on a patch to do this? (was it Jeff Davis?)

I just see a lot of cost caused by this "safety range". I yet have to
see its real value, other than "feel good".

Jan

--
Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither
liberty nor security. -- Benjamin Franklin