Re: [HACKERS] Core team statement on replication in PostgreSQL

2008-06-04 Thread Markus Schiltknecht
Hello Andrew, Andrew Sullivan wrote: Yes. And silent as ever. :-) Are the slides of your PgCon talk available for download somewhere? BTW: up until recently, there was yet another mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] It was less focused on hooks and got at least some traffic. :-) Are those

Re: [HACKERS] Core team statement on replication in PostgreSQL

2008-06-04 Thread Heikki Linnakangas
Stephen Denne wrote: Hannu Krosing wrote: The simplest form of synchronous wal shipping would not even need postgresql running on slave, just a small daemon which reports when wal blocks are a) received and b) synced to disk. While that does sound simple, I'd presume that most people would

Re: [HACKERS] Core team statement on replication in PostgreSQL

2008-06-04 Thread Teodor Sigaev
Hmm, WAL version compatibility is an interesting question. Most minor releases hasn't changed the WAL format, and it would be nice to allow As I remember, high minor version should read all WALs from lowers, but it isn't true for opposite case and between different major versions. running

Re: [HACKERS] Core team statement on replication in PostgreSQL

2008-06-04 Thread Csaba Nagy
On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 11:13 +0300, Heikki Linnakangas wrote: Hmm, WAL version compatibility is an interesting question. Most minor releases hasn't changed the WAL format, and it would be nice to allow running different minor versions in the master and slave in those cases. But it's

Re: [HACKERS] Core team statement on replication in PostgreSQL

2008-06-04 Thread Heikki Linnakangas
Csaba Nagy wrote: On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 11:13 +0300, Heikki Linnakangas wrote: Hmm, WAL version compatibility is an interesting question. Most minor releases hasn't changed the WAL format, and it would be nice to allow running different minor versions in the master and slave in those cases.

Re: [HACKERS] Core team statement on replication in PostgreSQL

2008-06-04 Thread Heikki Linnakangas
Teodor Sigaev wrote: Is it possible to use catalog version number as WAL version? No, because we don't change the catalog version number in minor releases, even though we might change WAL format. -- Heikki Linnakangas EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com -- Sent via pgsql-hackers

Re: [HACKERS] cannot use result of (insert..returning)

2008-06-04 Thread Heikki Linnakangas
dvs wrote: Hello, I need to use query like: select (insert into test (a) values (x) returning b),c from anytable where condition but it say ERROR: syntax error at or near into Is this a bug? No, it's a known limitation. -- Heikki Linnakangas EnterpriseDB

Re: [HACKERS] intercepting WAL writes

2008-06-04 Thread Decibel!
On May 29, 2008, at 1:57 AM, Hannu Krosing wrote: On Wed, 2008-05-28 at 19:11 -0400, Mike wrote: Can somebody point to the most logical place in the code to intercept the WAL writes? (just a rough direction would be enough)- or if this doesn’t make sense at all, another suggestion on where to

Re: [HACKERS] DISTINCT - GROUP BY

2008-06-04 Thread Decibel!
On Jun 3, 2008, at 9:03 AM, David Fetter wrote: On Tue, Jun 03, 2008 at 03:36:44PM +0200, Pavel Stehule wrote: Hello David http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faqs.TODO.html Consider using hash buckets to do DISTINCT, rather than sorting This would be beneficial when there are few distinct values.

Re: [HACKERS] Proposal: new function array_init

2008-06-04 Thread Decibel!
On Jun 2, 2008, at 11:46 AM, Tom Lane wrote: * Should the fill value be the first parameter instead of the last? +1. The other way just seems weird, at least to me. -- Decibel!, aka Jim C. Nasby, Database Architect [EMAIL PROTECTED] Give your computer some brain candy! www.distributed.net

Re: [HACKERS] Proposal: new function array_init

2008-06-04 Thread Pavel Stehule
2008/6/4 Decibel! [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Jun 2, 2008, at 11:46 AM, Tom Lane wrote: * Should the fill value be the first parameter instead of the last? +1. The other way just seems weird, at least to me. can you write reason? I put fill value on end, because it is like default value:

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Decibel!
On Sat, May 31, 2008 at 08:36:54PM +0100, Gregory Stark wrote: 4) By shifting from a model where postgresql.conf is document-formatted and hand-edited to one where it's machine generated, it becomes vastly easier to write simple utilities to manage these settings. Right now, the big

Re: [HACKERS] keyword list/ecpg

2008-06-04 Thread Michael Meskes
On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 09:44:02AM -0400, Tom Lane wrote: If we were going to do that, I'd want it to go all the way and somehow generate the common parts of the two .y files from a single source. That'd be enough of a step forward that it would be worth whatever ugliness is needed to make it

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Decibel!
On Mon, Jun 02, 2008 at 10:12:06AM -0400, Tom Lane wrote: Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Joshua has been banging a drum for a while now that all this data needs to get pushing into the database itself. This is, very simply, not going to happen. Shall we go over the reasons why

Re: [HACKERS] rfc: add pg_dump options to dump output

2008-06-04 Thread Decibel!
On Mon, Jun 02, 2008 at 02:06:57PM -0700, Josh Berkus wrote: Robert, Anyone see any issues with this? Should there be other information taken into account? Does this need to be an option itself, or can we just do it in all cases? +1 to do it in all cases. +1. I've definitely been in

Re: [HACKERS] Change lock requirements for adding a trigger

2008-06-04 Thread Decibel!
On Jun 3, 2008, at 5:04 PM, Simon Riggs wrote: On Tue, 2008-06-03 at 16:48 -0500, Decibel! wrote: On May 30, 2008, at 9:51 AM, Simon Riggs wrote: On Thu, 2008-05-29 at 19:18 -0500, Decibel! wrote: Is there a reason that we can't add a trigger to a table while a select is running? This is a

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Andreas Pflug
Decibel! wrote: There's no reason that the server has to deal with a text file. I completely agree that there must be a method to change settings even if the database isn't running, but that method does not necessarily need to be a text file. If we can come up with a standard API for reading

Re: [HACKERS] keyword list/ecpg

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
Michael Meskes [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 09:44:02AM -0400, Tom Lane wrote: If we were going to do that, I'd want it to go all the way and somehow generate the common parts of the two .y files from a single source. Any idea how to make this happen? We could of course do

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Aidan Van Dyk
* Andreas Pflug [EMAIL PROTECTED] [080604 10:20]: Hiding the storage of config parameters opaquely behind an API is something I've been hating for a long time on win32. ;-) When reading this thread, I'm wondering if anybody ever saw a config file for a complex software product that was

Re: [HACKERS] Core team statement on replication in PostgreSQL

2008-06-04 Thread Andrew Sullivan
On Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 09:24:20AM +0200, Markus Schiltknecht wrote: Are the slides of your PgCon talk available for download somewhere? There weren't any slides, really (there were 4 that I put up in case the cases I was discussing needed back-references, but they didn't). Joshua tells me that

Re: [HACKERS] Core team statement on replication in PostgreSQL

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
Heikki Linnakangas [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Hmm, WAL version compatibility is an interesting question. Most minor releases hasn't changed the WAL format, and it would be nice to allow running different minor versions in the master and slave in those cases. But it's certainly not unheard of

Re: [HACKERS] Proposal: new function array_init

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
Pavel Stehule [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I put fill value on end, because it is like default value: array_set(array[2,2]); array_set(array[2,2], 0); Huh? That's completely nonsensical ... where will you determine the type of the array, if you don't have a sample element? The fact that the

Re: [HACKERS] Change lock requirements for adding a trigger

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
Decibel! [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Ok, I'll take a stab at such a list. Can anyone think of any reasons why CREATE TRIGGER couldn't get by with ShareLock? pg_class.reltriggers. regards, tom lane -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org)

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Andreas Pflug
Aidan Van Dyk wrote: * Andreas Pflug [EMAIL PROTECTED] [080604 10:20]: Hiding the storage of config parameters opaquely behind an API is something I've been hating for a long time on win32. ;-) When reading this thread, I'm wondering if anybody ever saw a config file for a

Re: [HACKERS] keyword list/ecpg

2008-06-04 Thread Michael Meskes
On Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 10:21:19AM -0400, Tom Lane wrote: Ugh :-(. This is why I didn't want to go that route. :-) I have not spent much time looking at the ecpg grammar, so feel free to laugh this off, but I had the impression that all the rules derived from the backend grammar have

Re: [HACKERS] Core team statement on replication in PostgreSQL

2008-06-04 Thread Hannu Krosing
On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 10:40 -0400, Tom Lane wrote: Heikki Linnakangas [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Hmm, WAL version compatibility is an interesting question. Most minor releases hasn't changed the WAL format, and it would be nice to allow running different minor versions in the master and

Re: [HACKERS] Core team statement on replication in PostgreSQL

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
Hannu Krosing [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 10:40 -0400, Tom Lane wrote: Heikki Linnakangas [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Hmm, WAL version compatibility is an interesting question. Most minor releases hasn't changed the WAL format, and it would be nice to allow running

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
Andreas Pflug [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Well I'm an XML evangelist either. But the usual commenting out a parameter will reset it to default on reload, no? caveat isn't funny either, or duplicate parameter settings scattered throughout your file. Surely everyone who is opining on this thread

Re: [HACKERS] keyword list/ecpg

2008-06-04 Thread Mike Aubury
I wouldn't mind having a stab at this if you can expand on the 'magic' required. (I'm interested because I might be able to use the same logic to roll a third version of the .y for Aubit4GL outside of the Postgresql tree) On Wednesday 04 June 2008 16:11:49 Michael Meskes wrote: On Wed, Jun

Re: [HACKERS] keyword list/ecpg

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
Mike Aubury [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Wednesday 04 June 2008 16:11:49 Michael Meskes wrote: There is some small magic to know when to have blanks in between and when not, but that should be doable. I wouldn't mind having a stab at this if you can expand on the 'magic' required. Wouldn't

Re: [HACKERS] keyword list/ecpg

2008-06-04 Thread Mike Aubury
It might depend on the tokens.. Are =, ++ etc single tokens ? On Wednesday 04 June 2008 17:06:44 Tom Lane wrote: Mike Aubury [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Wednesday 04 June 2008 16:11:49 Michael Meskes wrote: There is some small magic to know when to have blanks in between and when not,

Re: [HACKERS] Core team statement on replication in PostgreSQL

2008-06-04 Thread Simon Riggs
On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 11:37 -0400, Tom Lane wrote: This thread is getting out of hand, actually. Agreed. We should start new threads for specific things. Please. However, since by definition pg_control doesn't change in a minor upgrade, there isn't any easy way to enforce a rule like slaves

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread David E. Wheeler
On Jun 3, 2008, at 20:48, Greg Smith wrote: Correct, but completely off-topic regardless. One problem to be solved here is to take PostgreSQL tuning from zero to, say, 50% automatic. Wander the user lists for a few months; the number of completely misconfigured systems out there is

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread David E. Wheeler
On Jun 4, 2008, at 07:19, Andreas Pflug wrote: IMHO the best compromise in machine and human readability is an XML format. It's easily decorateable with comments, easily interpreted and a pg_settings view could enhance it with even more comments, so an editor using pgsql functions (to read

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Greg Sabino Mullane
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: RIPEMD160 Exactly. The issue is that application developers, who are not DBAs, have no idea how to tune PostgreSQL, and postgresql.conf is daunting and confusing. So they use a different database that's faster. Changing some of our defaults would go

Re: [HACKERS] Core team statement on replication in PostgreSQL

2008-06-04 Thread Jeff Davis
On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 14:17 +0300, Heikki Linnakangas wrote: Would that also cover possible differences in page size, 32bit OS vs. 64bit OS, different timestamp flavour, etc. issues ? AFAIR, all these things can have an influence on how the data is written and possibly make the WAL

[HACKERS] meaning of backend exit code 2?

2008-06-04 Thread Jeffrey Baker
I have a need to find out the meaning of a backend exiting unexpectedly with exit code 2. Leafing through the source of 8.1 I can't really find it. Is there anything in postgres which would exit with code 2, or should I be looking at libraries and junk dragged in by languages?

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
David E. Wheeler [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Exactly. The issue is that application developers, who are not DBAs, have no idea how to tune PostgreSQL, and postgresql.conf is daunting and confusing. So they use a different database that's faster. I take it you haven't looked at mysql's

Re: [HACKERS] Core team statement on replication in PostgreSQL

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
Jeff Davis [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 14:17 +0300, Heikki Linnakangas wrote: These are already covered by the information in pg_control. Another thing that can change between systems is the collation behavior, which can corrupt indexes (and other bad things). That is

Re: [HACKERS] Core team statement on replication in PostgreSQL

2008-06-04 Thread Jeff Davis
On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 14:23 -0400, Tom Lane wrote: That is covered by pg_control, at least to the extent of forcing the same value of LC_COLLATE. But the same LC_COLLATE means different things on different systems. Even en_US means something different on Mac versus Linux. Regards, Jeff

Re: [HACKERS] meaning of backend exit code 2?

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
Jeffrey Baker [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I have a need to find out the meaning of a backend exiting unexpectedly with exit code 2. Leafing through the source of 8.1 I can't really find it. But are you running 8.1? In 8.2 and up this is the expected result from SIGQUIT.

Re: [HACKERS] meaning of backend exit code 2?

2008-06-04 Thread Jeffrey Baker
On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 11:31 AM, Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jeffrey Baker [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I have a need to find out the meaning of a backend exiting unexpectedly with exit code 2. Leafing through the source of 8.1 I can't really find it. But are you running 8.1? In 8.2

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread David E. Wheeler
On Jun 4, 2008, at 11:22, Tom Lane wrote: David E. Wheeler [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Exactly. The issue is that application developers, who are not DBAs, have no idea how to tune PostgreSQL, and postgresql.conf is daunting and confusing. So they use a different database that's faster. I take

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Andrew Dunstan
David E. Wheeler wrote: On Jun 4, 2008, at 11:22, Tom Lane wrote: David E. Wheeler [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Exactly. The issue is that application developers, who are not DBAs, have no idea how to tune PostgreSQL, and postgresql.conf is daunting and confusing. So they use a different

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread David E. Wheeler
On Jun 4, 2008, at 12:48, Andrew Dunstan wrote: I'm not much into MySQL, but in the work I've done with it, I've had to create /etc/my.cnf myself. There *is* no configuration file configuring MySQL until that file is created, is there? So there is no configuration to learn at first. I'm

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
David E. Wheeler [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm not much into MySQL, but in the work I've done with it, I've had to create /etc/my.cnf myself. There *is* no configuration file configuring MySQL until that file is created, is there? So there is no configuration to learn at first. Postgres

Re: [HACKERS] Proposal: new function array_init

2008-06-04 Thread Pavel Stehule
2008/6/4 Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Pavel Stehule [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I put fill value on end, because it is like default value: array_set(array[2,2]); array_set(array[2,2], 0); Huh? That's completely nonsensical ... where will you determine the type of the array, if you don't have

Re: [HACKERS] Change lock requirements for adding a trigger

2008-06-04 Thread Simon Riggs
On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 10:59 -0400, Tom Lane wrote: Decibel! [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Ok, I'll take a stab at such a list. Can anyone think of any reasons why CREATE TRIGGER couldn't get by with ShareLock? pg_class.reltriggers. ISTM that we do this in many ways on pg_class, if we

Re: [HACKERS] Proposal: new function array_init

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
Pavel Stehule [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 2008/6/4 Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Huh? That's completely nonsensical ... where will you determine the type of the array, if you don't have a sample element? it is nonsens in current postgres. But null array is castable to anyarray no? If you mean

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Pavel Stehule
2008/6/4 David E. Wheeler [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Jun 3, 2008, at 20:48, Greg Smith wrote: Correct, but completely off-topic regardless. One problem to be solved here is to take PostgreSQL tuning from zero to, say, 50% automatic. Wander the user lists for a few months; the number of completely

Re: [HACKERS] Change lock requirements for adding a trigger

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
Simon Riggs [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: We have * relhasindex (bool) set by CREATE INDEX but not unset by DROP INDEX * relhasrules (bool) * reltriggers (int2) set by CREATE and DROP, since its an integer Right. If CREATE INDEX can take a Share lock and can update pg_class, why would it not

Re: [HACKERS] Proposal: new function array_init

2008-06-04 Thread Pavel Stehule
2008/6/4 Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Pavel Stehule [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 2008/6/4 Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Huh? That's completely nonsensical ... where will you determine the type of the array, if you don't have a sample element? it is nonsens in current postgres. But null array is

Re: [HACKERS] Proposal: new function array_init

2008-06-04 Thread Andrew Dunstan
Tom Lane wrote: Pavel Stehule [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 2008/6/4 Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Huh? That's completely nonsensical ... where will you determine the type of the array, if you don't have a sample element? it is nonsens in current postgres. But null array is

Re: [HACKERS] Proposal: new function array_init

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
Pavel Stehule [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 2008/6/4 Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED]: If you mean an array of nulls, it still has to have an element type. I know it - but there was discus about untyped array for empty arrays like ARRAY[] What's that have to do with array_init? It will not (usually)

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Greg Smith
On Wed, 4 Jun 2008, Andreas Pflug wrote: When reading this thread, I'm wondering if anybody ever saw a config file for a complex software product that was easily editable and understandable. I would recommend Apache's httpd.conf as an example of something that's easy to edit and follow.

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread David E. Wheeler
On Jun 4, 2008, at 13:31, Pavel Stehule wrote: do you thing, so any better config can help? It's not possible. And you can't tune database without well knowledge of applications that use database. Any automatic tools are joy for child. But some default PostgreSQL parameters are not optimal.

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread David E. Wheeler
On Jun 4, 2008, at 13:12, Tom Lane wrote: David E. Wheeler [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm not much into MySQL, but in the work I've done with it, I've had to create /etc/my.cnf myself. There *is* no configuration file configuring MySQL until that file is created, is there? So there is no

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Wed, 4 Jun 2008, Andreas Pflug wrote: IMHO the best compromise in machine and human readability is an XML format. If the primary PostgreSQL configuration file becomes XML I will quit working with the project. I'm not kidding. I have no particular use

Re: [HACKERS] Change lock requirements for adding a trigger

2008-06-04 Thread Simon Riggs
On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 16:33 -0400, Tom Lane wrote: Simon Riggs [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: We have * relhasindex (bool) set by CREATE INDEX but not unset by DROP INDEX * relhasrules (bool) * reltriggers (int2) set by CREATE and DROP, since its an integer Right. If CREATE INDEX can

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Steve Atkins
On Jun 4, 2008, at 1:57 PM, Tom Lane wrote: * Can we build a configuration wizard to tell newbies what settings they need to tweak? Probably. Given the demographics of a lot of the newbies is Windows this likely needs to be a pointy-clicky sort of thing if it's going to be widely useful.

Re: [HACKERS] Proposal: new function array_init

2008-06-04 Thread Pavel Stehule
2008/6/4 Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Pavel Stehule [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 2008/6/4 Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED]: If you mean an array of nulls, it still has to have an element type. I know it - but there was discus about untyped array for empty arrays like ARRAY[] What's that have to do

Re: [HACKERS] Proposal: new function array_init

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
Pavel Stehule [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: idealized code: a = array_set(array[10,10]); // untyped null array a[10,10] = 'text'; -- now array is typed And how did you declare 'a'? This seems like a solution in search of a problem. regards, tom lane -- Sent via

Re: [HACKERS] Proposal: new function array_init

2008-06-04 Thread Pavel Stehule
2008/6/4 Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Pavel Stehule [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: idealized code: a = array_set(array[10,10]); // untyped null array a[10,10] = 'text'; -- now array is typed And how did you declare 'a'? This seems like a solution in search of a problem. you have true - problem

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread BRUSSER Michael
If I can add my 2 cents as the end user, IMHO having the configuration file in the xml format is unnecessary and only makes it less user-friendly. Thanks, Michael. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tom Lane Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread David E. Wheeler
On Jun 4, 2008, at 13:57, Tom Lane wrote: So I think we should stop worrying about the file format and think about these two problems: * Can we present the config options in a more helpful way (this is 99% a documentation problem, not a code problem)? * Can we build a configuration wizard

Re: [HACKERS] Proposal: new function array_init

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
Pavel Stehule [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: postgres=# select array_fill('p',array[4,4]); ERROR: could not determine polymorphic type because input has type unknown [ shrug... ] I don't really see a problem with that. I can use hack: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION array_fill(dv text, dims int[])

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Rainer Bauer
Pavel Stehule wrote: 2008/6/4 David E. Wheeler [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Exactly. The issue is that application developers, who are not DBAs, have no idea how to tune PostgreSQL, and postgresql.conf is daunting and confusing. So they use a different database that's faster. do you thing, so any

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Andreas Pflug
Tom Lane wrote: * Can we present the config options in a more helpful way (this is 99% a documentation problem, not a code problem)? * Can we build a configuration wizard to tell newbies what settings they need to tweak? It's certainly one thing to create an initial postgresql.conf from

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Andrew Dunstan
Tom Lane wrote: * Can we build a configuration wizard to tell newbies what settings they need to tweak? That would trump all the other suggestions conclusively. Anyone good at expert systems? cheers andrew -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list

Re: [HACKERS] Core team statement on replication in PostgreSQL

2008-06-04 Thread Koichi Suzuki
Well, WAL format doesn't only depend on WAL itself, but also depend on each resource manager. If we introduce WAL format version identification, ISTM that we have to take care of the matching of resource manager in the master and the slave as well. 2008/6/4 Heikki Linnakangas [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
Andreas Pflug [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Tom Lane wrote: * Can we build a configuration wizard to tell newbies what settings they need to tweak? It's certainly one thing to create an initial postgresql.conf from scratch after some inquiry, but a different level of problems to deal with when

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Greg Smith
On Wed, 4 Jun 2008, Tom Lane wrote: The real problem we need to solve is how to allow newbies to have the system auto-configured to something that more or less solves their problems. Putting the config settings in XML does not accomplish that, and neither does putting them inside the database.

Re: [HACKERS] rfc: add pg_dump options to dump output

2008-06-04 Thread Greg Smith
On Tue, 3 Jun 2008, Tom Lane wrote: Well, the stuff included into the dump by pg_dump -v is informative, too. But we stopped doing that by default because of complaints. I remain unconvinced that this proposal won't suffer the same fate. I think it would be reasonable to only include the

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
Andrew Dunstan [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Tom Lane wrote: * Can we build a configuration wizard to tell newbies what settings they need to tweak? That would trump all the other suggestions conclusively. Anyone good at expert systems? How far could we get with the answers to just three

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Wed, 4 Jun 2008, Tom Lane wrote: The real problem we need to solve is how to allow newbies to have the system auto-configured to something that more or less solves their problems. Putting the config settings in XML does not accomplish that, and neither

Re: [HACKERS] Core team statement on replication in PostgreSQL

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
Koichi Suzuki [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Well, WAL format doesn't only depend on WAL itself, but also depend on each resource manager. If we introduce WAL format version identification, ISTM that we have to take care of the matching of resource manager in the master and the slave as well.

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Aidan Van Dyk
* Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED] [080604 20:46]: If those aren't enough questions, what else must we ask? Or maybe they aren't the right questions at all --- maybe we should ask is this a dedicated machine or not and try to extrapolate everything else from what we (hopefully) can find out about

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Steve Atkins
On Jun 4, 2008, at 5:23 PM, Tom Lane wrote: Andrew Dunstan [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Tom Lane wrote: * Can we build a configuration wizard to tell newbies what settings they need to tweak? That would trump all the other suggestions conclusively. Anyone good at expert systems? How

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Greg Smith
On Wed, 4 Jun 2008, Andrew Dunstan wrote: Tom Lane wrote: * Can we build a configuration wizard to tell newbies what settings they need to tweak? That would trump all the other suggestions conclusively. Anyone good at expert systems? Sigh. I guess we need to start over again. Last year

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Steve Atkins
On Jun 4, 2008, at 6:28 PM, Greg Smith wrote: Josh Berkus pointed out that he already had the expert system part of this problem solved pretty well with a spreadsheet: http://pgfoundry.org/docman/view.php/1000106/84/calcfactors.sxc (that's in the OpenOffice Calc format if you don't know

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Greg Smith
On Wed, 4 Jun 2008, Aidan Van Dyk wrote: * Are backends always writing out dirty buffers because there are no free ones? This might mean tweaking settings affecting bgwriter. What you mean on the first one is are backends always writing out dirty buffers becuase there are no *clean* ones;

Re: [HACKERS] [PERFORM] Outer joins and equivalence

2008-06-04 Thread Tom Lane
[ redirecting thread from -performance to -hackers ] Simon Riggs [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I've got a test case which shows something related and weird, though not the exact case. The queries shown here have significantly different costs, depending upon whether we use tables a or b in the

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Aidan Van Dyk
* Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] [080604 22:14]: So everything you mentioned is either recently added/documented or being actively worked on somewhere, and the first two were things I worked on myself after noticing they were missing. Believe me, I feel the items that still aren't there,

Re: [HACKERS] rfc: add pg_dump options to dump output

2008-06-04 Thread Euler Taveira de Oliveira
Robert Treat wrote: If you are calling pg_dump with different flags, it seems likely your breaking diff equality anyway so I'm not sure how valid that is. What about different users? Different connection options will result in the same file but it breaks diff-dump tools. I don't see the point

Re: [HACKERS] Overhauling GUCS

2008-06-04 Thread Greg Smith
On Wed, 4 Jun 2008, Aidan Van Dyk wrote: I'd love a tool that helped me analyze my current running PG database (and yes, that includes getting *current* settings), and suggest config changes Fine. To demonstrate why the overhaul is needed, let's start designing a simple tool whose sole

Re: [HACKERS] Proposal: new function array_init

2008-06-04 Thread Pavel Stehule
2008/6/5 Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Pavel Stehule [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: postgres=# select array_fill('p',array[4,4]); ERROR: could not determine polymorphic type because input has type unknown [ shrug... ] I don't really see a problem with that. you have t cast in most common case

Re: [HACKERS] Core team statement on replication in PostgreSQL

2008-06-04 Thread Koichi Suzuki
If the version of the master and the slave is different and we'd still like to allow log shipping replication, we need a negotiation if WAL format for the two is compatible. I hope it is not in our scope and I'm worrying too much. 2008/6/5 Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Koichi Suzuki [EMAIL

Re: [HACKERS] [PERFORM] Outer joins and equivalence

2008-06-04 Thread Simon Riggs
On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 22:18 -0400, Tom Lane wrote: [ redirecting thread from -performance to -hackers ] Simon Riggs [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I've got a test case which shows something related and weird, though not the exact case. The queries shown here have significantly different

[HACKERS] orafce does NOT build with Sun Studio compiler

2008-06-04 Thread Mayuresh Nirhali
Hello hackers, During the Oracle migration tutorial by peter at PGCon, I took an action item for myself to try orafce on Solaris/OpenSolaris. As pg binaries are bundled with Solaris now (using Sun Studio compiler), I decided to try out building orafce against the same bundled binaries (with