While beneficial, both for throughput and average/worst case latency, in
a significant number of workloads, there are other workloads in which
backend_flush_after can cause significant performance regressions in
comparison to < 9.6 releases. The regression is most likely when the hot
data set is bigger than shared buffers, but significantly smaller than
the operating system's page cache.
I personally think that the benefit of enabling backend flush control is
considerably bigger than the potential downsides, but a fair argument
can be made that not regressing is more important than improving
performance/latency. As the latter is the consensus, change the default
to 0.
The other settings introduced in 428b1d6b2 do not have the same
potential for regressions, so leave them enabled.
Benchmarks leading up to changing the default have been performed by
Mithun Cy, Ashutosh Sharma and Robert Haas.
Discussion: CAD__OuhPmc6XH=wYRm_+Q657yQE88DakN4=Ybh2oveFasHkoeA@mail.gmail.com
Document these as "nearest integer >= argument" and "nearest integer <=
argument", which will hopefully be less confusing than the old formulation.
New wording is from Matlab via Dean Rasheed.
I changed the pg_description entries as well as the SGML docs. In the
back branches, this will only affect installations initdb'd in the future,
but it should be harmless otherwise.
Discussion: <CAEZATCW3yzJo-NMSiQs5jXNFbTsCEftZS-Og8=FvFdiU+kYuSA@mail.gmail.com>
This terminology provoked widespread complaints. So, instead, rename
the GUC max_parallel_degree to max_parallel_workers_per_gather
(leaving room for a possible future GUC max_parallel_workers that acts
as a system-wide limit), and rename the parallel_degree reloption to
parallel_workers. Rename structure members to match.
These changes create a dump/restore hazard for users of PostgreSQL
9.6beta1 who have set the reloption (or applied the GUC using ALTER
USER or ALTER DATABASE).
Fix grammar, improve examples, etc.
I did not attempt to document the current behavior concerning distance-zero
matches, because I think that's broken and needs to change, so I'm not
going to use up brain cells figuring out how to explain how it works now.
One way or the other, there's still more to write here.
Commit 6820094d1 mixed up types of parent object (table) with type of
sub-object being commented on. Noticed while fixing docs for
COMMENT ON ACCESS METHOD.
Backpatch to 9.5, like that commit.
It was previously suggested that "esoteric" operations such as creating
a new access method would require direct manipulation of the system
catalogs, but that example has gone away, and I can't think of a new one
to replace it, so just put in some weasel wording.
Mostly these are just comments but there are a few in documentation
and a handful in code and tests. Hopefully this doesn't cause too much
unnecessary pain for backpatching. I relented from some of the most
common like "thru" for that reason. The rest don't seem numerous
enough to cause problems.
Thanks to Kevin Lyda's tool https://pypi.python.org/pypi/misspellings
Per discussion, this is a more understandable and future-proof way of
exposing the setting to users. On-disk, we can still store it in words,
so as to not break on-disk compatibility with beta1.
Along the way, clean up the code associated with Bloom reloptions.
Provide explicit macros for default and maximum lengths rather than
having magic numbers buried in multiple places in the code. Drop
the adjustBloomOptions() code altogether: it was useless in view of
the fact that reloptions.c already performed default-substitution and
range checking for the options. Rename a couple of macros and types
for more clarity.
Discussion: <23767.1464926580@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Oracle recommends using VARCHAR2 not VARCHAR, allegedly because they might
someday change VARCHAR to be spec-compliant about distinguishing null from
empty string. (I'm not holding my breath, though.) Our examples of PL/SQL
code were using VARCHAR, which while not wrong is missing the pedagogical
opportunity to talk about converting Oracle type names to Postgres. So
switch the examples to use VARCHAR2, and add some text about what to do
with common Oracle type names like VARCHAR2 and NUMBER. (There is probably
more to be said here, but those are the ones I'm sure about offhand.)
Per suggestion from rapg12@gmail.com.
Discussion: <20160521140046.22591.24672@wrigleys.postgresql.org>
Correct obsolete install instructions, as noted by Daniel Gustafsson.
Clarify the test code's prerequisites.
Discussion: <88E617F2-7721-4C4E-84F4-886A2041C1D0@yesql.se>
David Johnston pointed out that the original text here had been obsoleted
by SQL:2008, which allowed ORDER BY in subqueries. We could weaken the
text to describe ORDER-BY-in-subqueries as an optional SQL feature that's
possibly unportable; but then the exact same statements would apply to
the alternative it's being compared to (ORDER-BY-in-aggregate-calls).
So really that would be pretty useless; let's just take out the sentence
entirely. Instead, point out the hazard that any extra processing in the
upper query might cause the subquery output order to be destroyed.
Discussion: <CAKFQuwbAX=iO9QbpN7_jr+BnUWm9FYX8WbEPUvG0p+nZhp6TZg@mail.gmail.com>
We didn't have any real user documentation about how index-only scans
work or how to design indexes to exploit them. Remedy that.
Per gripe from David Johnston.
In the documentation for nextval(), point out explicitly that INSERT ...
ON CONFLICT will call nextval() if needed for the insertion case, whether
or not it ends up following the ON CONFLICT path. This seems to be a
matter of some confusion, cf bug #14126, so let's be clear about it.
Also mention the issue in the CREATE SEQUENCE reference page, since that
is another place where people might expect such things to be covered.
Minor wording improvements nearby, as well.
Back-patch to 9.5 where ON CONFLICT was introduced.
Describe compat_realm = 0 as "disabled" not "enabled", per discussion
with Christian Ullrich. I failed to resist the temptation to do some
other minor copy-editing in the same area.
Hash indexes are not WAL-logged, and so do not maintain the LSN of
index pages. Since the "snapshot too old" feature counts on
detecting error conditions using the LSN of a table and all indexes
on it, this makes it impossible to safely do early vacuuming on any
table with a hash index, so add this to the tests for whether the
xid used to vacuum a table can be adjusted based on
old_snapshot_threshold.
While at it, add a paragraph to the docs for old_snapshot_threshold
which specifically mentions this and other aspects of the feature
which may otherwise surprise users.
Problem reported and patch reviewed by Amit Kapila
Call out the major enhancements in this release as identified by
pgsql-advocacy discussion, and rearrange some of the entries to
make those items more prominent. Other minor improvements per
advice from Vitaly Burovoy, Masahiko Sawada, Peter Geoghegan,
and Andres Freund.
The similarity of the original names to SQL keywords seems like a bad
idea. Rename them before we're stuck with 'em forever.
In passing, minor code and docs cleanup.
Discussion: <4875.1462210058@sss.pgh.pa.us>
These functions behave like the backend's least/greatest functions,
not like min/max, so the originally-chosen names invite confusion.
Per discussion, rename to least/greatest.
I also took it upon myself to make them return double if any input is
double. The previous behavior of silently coercing all inputs to int
surely does not meet the principle of least astonishment.
Copy-edit some of the other new functions' documentation, too.
