Re: Google SoC--Idea Request

On 4/24/06, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> We've talked more than once about offering multiple alternative
> starting-point postgresql.conf files to give people an idea of what to
> do for small/medium/large installations. MySQL have done that for years
> and it doesn't seem that users are unable to cope with the concept.
> But doing this is (a) mostly a matter of testing and documenting, not
> coding and (b) probably too small for a SoC project anyway.

Yeah, it would be nice to offer a small/med/large config file, but
there are also other considerations that affect PostgreSQL and not
MySQL. An example is the system-wide shared memory maximum... RedHat
defaults to 32M, SuSE to 32M?, and OSX to 4M (or something crazy like
that). So even if we give out a med/large config file, they won't
work for most people who have default Linux installs. Tuning
PostgreSQL isn't all that hard, but it may be nice to give people a
starting point.

I don't know, I'm not averse to adding something like the following to
the SoC ideas:

Benchmark PostgreSQL and analyze results to build optimal default
configuration files for medium and large-scale systems.

Of course, the definition of medium and large vary, as does the
application (OLTP, DSS, etc.); so we'd have to define them.

Thoughts?

--
Jonah H. Harris, Database Internals Architect
EnterpriseDB Corporation
732.331.1324