Re: document the need to analyze partitioned tables

On Wed, Sep 6, 2023 at 05:53:56AM +0200, Laurenz Albe wrote:
> > We may have different mental models here. This relates to the part
> > that I wasn't keen on in your patch, i.e:
> >
> > +    The partitions of a partitioned table are normal tables and get processed
> > +    by autovacuum
> >
> > While I agree that the majority of partitions are likely to be
> > relkind='r', which you might ordinarily consider a "normal table", you
> > just might change your mind when you try to INSERT or UPDATE records
> > that would violate the partition constraint. Some partitions might
> > also be themselves partitioned tables and others might be foreign
> > tables. That does not really matter much when it comes to what
> > autovacuum does or does not do, but I'm not really keen to imply in
> > our documents that partitions are "normal tables".
>
> Agreed, there are differences between partitions and normal tables.
> And this is not the place in the documentation where we would like to
> get into detail about the differences.
>
> Attached is the next version of my patch.

I adjusted your patch to be shorter and clearer, patch attached. I am
planning to apply this back to PG 11.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> https://momjian.us
EDB https://enterprisedb.com

Only you can decide what is important to you.