Re: Autovacuum, too often?

Glyn Astill <glynastill(at)yahoo(dot)co(dot)uk> wrote:
>
> > From: Harald Armin Massa <haraldarminmassa(at)gmail(dot)com>
> > Hello Glyn,
> >
> > Our legacy apps have some permanent tables that they use
> > for tempory data
> > > and constantly clear out, I've kicked the
> > developers and I intend to
> > > eradicate them eventually (the tables, not the
> > developers).
> > >
> >
> > and what is the problem with this usage? That is a
> > perfectly valid thing to
> > do; PostgreSQL can handle that for centuries; no need to
> > kick the developers
> > :)
> >
>
> In some cases yes, but most of the time it's because they can't be bothered to sort a list of 100 items in their application...

*shrug* Our experience has been that PostgreSQL is much better at sorting
than anything we could write with our high-pressure deadlines. Additionally,
information sometimes needs to be truncated (with LIMIT) after it's
sorted, so having PG do all the work results in less network bandwidth
and less memory usage by the application.

Maybe that's not _always_ the right answer, but it seems to be a good
answer 99% of the time. Sounds like your developers are using the
database for what it was intended for, instead of just doing single
row selects like a lot of amateurs I've come across.

--
Bill Moran
Collaborative Fusion Inc.

wmoran(at)collaborativefusion(dot)com
Phone: 412-422-3463x4023