Re: New 9.6 external sort guidance around temp_tablespaces and maintenance_work_mem

On Sat, Apr 30, 2016 at 04:39:22PM -0700, Peter Geoghegan wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 30, 2016 at 4:26 PM, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:
> > On Sat, Apr 30, 2016 at 04:23:00PM -0700, Peter Geoghegan wrote:
> >> Maybe there is a place to emphasize this change in the release notes.
> >> I don't really want to make it about the external sort feature,
> >> though, because enabling higher work_mem settings by making sure that
> >> does not disadvantage external sorts is as much about enabling
> >> HashAggregates as it is about enabling internal sorts.
> >
> > We do often mention in the release notes areas that will need retuning.
>
> How do you feel about it in this instance?
>
> As you may have gathered, my perspective is that the external sorting
> patches were more about fixing a problem with tuplesort than about
> improving its performance. The performance characteristics of the old
> approach to sorting runs were all over the place, which made
> increasing work_mem like taking one step forward, then two steps
> backwards.

Yes, we should mention something.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

+ As you are, so once was I. As I am, so you will be. +
+ Ancient Roman grave inscription +