Re: Vacuum statistics

On Jan 2, 2025, at 4:33 PM, Sami Imseih <samimseih(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
>> While backwards compatibility is important, there’s definitely precedent for changing
>> what shows up in the catalog. IMHO it’s better to bite the bullet and move those fields
>> instead of having vacuum stats spread across two different views.
>
> Correct, the most recent one that I could think of is pg_stat_checkpointer,
> which pulled the checkpoint related columns from pg_stat_bgwriter.
> In that case though, these are distinct background processes and
> it's a clear distinction.
>
> In this case, I am not so sure about this, particularly because
> we will then have the autoanalyze and autovacuum fields in different
> views, which could be more confusing to users than saying pg_stat_all_tables
> has high level metrics about vacuum and analyze and for more details on
> vacuum, refer to pg_stat_vacuum_tables ( or whatever name we settle on ).

I guess one question is how realistic it is to try and put everything about (auto)vacuum in a single view. Given the complexity, the answer to that might just be “no”. In that case leaving existing fields in pg_stat_all_tables is a lot more reasonable.

Related to this… it’d be nice if we had a view that gave insight to users about auto vacuum scheduling. I know there’s one floating around the internet, but given the number of systems I’ve seen where autovac can’t keep up it’d be good to raise user awareness.