Re: Re: Future plans for raw devices ?

On Fri, 2 Jun 2000, Bruce Momjian wrote:

> > > [ Charset ISO-8859-1 unsupported, converting... ]
> > > > I understand OID is signed integer which go up to 2^31.
> > > > Almost any case it would be sufficient. (It's sufficient for me, at least)
> > > >
> > > > What I really want to know is the same as original poster.
> > > >
> > > > > > 8. Can a database be spread over more than one disk drive?
> > >
> > > Yes, by creating symbolic links for the files in data/base/dbname.
> > >
> > > > > > 9. Can a table be spread over more than one disk drive?
> > >
> > > Yes, if it gets over 1GB, it is split and a new file created. Symbolic
> > > links allow them to be moved.
> > >
> >
> > Yeah ! Strong magic! BTW: are there any plans to have the database files on raw
> > devices in the future?
> >
>
> Most think that raw devices are a pain and offer little performance
> improvement and lots of portability and coding problems.

I don't know how much it is a performance improvement (someone say 10-20%),
but Bruce is probably right, it is a huge work and with dependence on
hardware & system implementation.

We already discussed about it --- it is hacker's archive.

IMHO now is not in PG background for features like I/O raw or on-line
replication. It needs better storage layout and tablespace feature.

Karel