PostgreSQL talk at CASCON

https://www-927.ibm.com/ibm/cas/cascon/papers/papers.shtml#1

Tuesday, October 28 paper presentations
Session 1: Databases

DBMS Workload Control Using Throttling: Experimental Insights
Best Paper
Wendy Powley and Pat Martin, Queen's University; Paul Bird, IBM Toronto Lab

"Today's Database Management Systems (DBMSs) are required to handle
diverse, mixed workloads and to provide differentiated levels of
service to ensure that critical work takes priority. In order to meet
these needs it is necessary for a DBMS to have control over the
workload executing in the system. Lower priority workloads should be
limited to allow higher priority workloads to complete in a timely
fashion. In this paper we examine query throttling techniques as a
method of workload control. In our approach, a workload class may be
slowed down during execution, thus releasing system resources that can
be used by higher priority workloads. We examine two methods of
throttling; constant throttling throughout query execution, and query
interruption in which a query is paused for a period of time. A set of
experiments using Postresql 8.1 provides insights regarding the
performance of these different throttling techniques under different
workload conditions and how they compare to using operating system
process priority control as a throttling mechanism."

Another interesting-looking paper by several of the same people:

Using Economic Models to Allocate Resources in Database Management Systems
Mingyi Zhang, Patrick Martin, and Wendy Powley, Queen's University; Paul Bird, IBM Toronto Lab

This one was applied to DB2, instead; the very title is highly
suggestive of approaches to automating the handling of database
tuning, and points to ways to evaluate such in a systematic way...

We should probably contact these folks and see if there's either:
a) Anything to feed to the hackers, or
b) Anyone that might want to speak at one of the PostgreSQL conferences...
--
output = reverse("ofni.secnanifxunil" "@" "enworbbc")
http://cbbrowne.com/info/nonrdbms.html
"What you end up with, after running an operating system concept
through these many marketing coffee filters, is something not unlike
plain hot water." -- Matt Welsh