Re: Patch: Write Amplification Reduction Method (WARM)

On 21 March 2017 at 20:04, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:
> Yes, but once it is written it will take years before those bits can be
> used on most installations.

Well the problem isn't most installations. On most installations it
should be pretty straightforward to check the oldest database xid and
compare that to when the database was migrated to post-9.0. (Actually
there may be some additional code to write but it's just ensuring that
the bits are actually cleared and not just ignored but even so
databases do generally need to be vacuumed more often than on the
order of years though.)

The problem is that somebody tomorrow could upgrade an 8.4 database to
10.0. In general it seems even versions we don't support get extra
support for migrating away from. I assume it's better to help support
upgrading than to continue to have users using unsupported versions...
And even if you're not concerned about 8.4 someone could still upgrade
9.4 for years to come.

It probably does make sense pick a version, say, 10.0, and have it go
out of its way to ensure it cleans up the MOVED_IN/MOVED_OFF so that
we can be sure that any database was pg_upgraded from 10.0+ doesn't
have any left. Then at least we'll know when the bits are available
again.

--
greg