All,

> I'm not sure what the solution is. This scenario is going to be a problem
> for any system which tries to judge future usage based on past usage. If
> the infrequent query with a strict response time requirement is infrequent
> enough any automatic algorithm will evict it.

The way Greg puts this it sounds extremely hypothetical, but it's actually 
pretty common.

For example, I had an application which was primarily data entry but 
periodically (one per 10 minutes or so) would run a heavy-duty full-text 
search.  This caused the full-text index to go to disk alot ... but since the 
data entry was employees and the FTS was for customers, we'd have rather had 
the FTI "pinned" in memory and the data entry be 50% slower.  (in the end, we 
solved the issue with a ramdisk but that was a bit of a hack and involved 
spending $$$ on RAM)

Mind you, that's a case of needing to have an *index* pinned, but I think 
those are just as common.  Overall, it's a problem of having applications 
where response time is *not* tied to frequency of usage.

-- 
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

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