On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 12:11 -0800, Josh Berkus wrote: > Jeffery, > > > > PostgreSQL *desperately* needs a better means of dealing with > > > configuration (though I guess I shouldn't be pushing too hard for this > > > since the current state of affairs brings me business). Any > > > improvement in this area would be very welcome. > > > http://pgfoundry.org/projects/configurator/ is something worth looking > > > at. > > > > An ideal facility would be a program that analyzes the workload at > > runtime and adjusts accordingly. That doesn't sound too hard, within > > some unambitious boundary. If anyone would like to work on this, I'd be > > happy to contribute. > > It seems pretty hard to *me*, compared with static configuration. If you > have ideas for runtime analysis of configuration criteria, I'd be thrilled > to hear them. From my perspective, most of them depend on backend > monitoring that we don't have yet (like querying how full the FSM is).
I agree that some instrumentation of the backend might be needed. But several of the performance-critical parameters seem tractable: Effective cache size - should be easy to monitor the system for this Shared buffers - easy to start from a rule-of-thumb and monitor usage Work mem - trace the size and frequency of temp files Wal buffers - trace the average or 80th percentile number of pages generated by transactions Commit delay - track the concurrency level and avg distance btw commits Checkpoint segments - should be very easy to auto-adjust Random page cost - should possible to determine this at runtime Vacuum* - may be possible to determine vacuum impact on concurrent queries ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq