Re: NOLOGGING option, or ?

Bruce,

> The problem with a new command is that it becomes unclear when you
> should use COPY and when LOAD DATA, and it confuses users, and has
> maintenance overhead. If Bizgres wants a new command name, go for it,
> but it is unlikely that the community release is going to go in that
> direction, unless there is a fundamental agreement that COPY is broken
> and needs a major revamp, and I have heard no talk of that.

The question of whether COPY should be improved or whether the changes
should take the form of a new command is separate from the question of
whether the performance of the load path in PostgreSQL needs improvement.

The 90% performance increase (from 12 MB/s to 21 MB/s) that Alon reported
comes from replacing the parsing logic within COPY. I believe that the
parsing logic in COPY is fundamentally broken from a performance
perspective, and may be broken from a functionality perspective WRT embedded
backslashes.

One of the reasons to consider a LOAD DATA command is that we can isolate
the need for performance improvements and special syntax from the concerns
of preserving the legacy behavior of COPY for use as the primary mechanism
for DUMP and RESTORE.

- Luke