From: | Decibel! <decibel(at)decibel(dot)org> |
---|---|
To: | Mag Gam <magawake(at)gmail(dot)com> |
Cc: | pgsql-novice(at)postgresql(dot)org |
Subject: | Re: Database theory question |
Date: | 2008-04-19 19:01:05 |
Message-ID: | 0EFD0120-1B67-4C45-9D36-A9BD96E8BD13@decibel.org |
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Thread: | |
Lists: | pgsql-novice |
On Apr 17, 2008, at 2:43 PM, Mag Gam wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> While reading this article, History tables and event logging --
> http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-dbdsgn2.html, I
> realized I try to do event logging in SQL.
>
> My question are: Is SQL a good tool for event logging? Does anyone
> have a sample table sctucture for the most optimal way of event
> logging? Current I have 2 tables. 1 table with timestamps, another
> with event. Can anyone recommend a better way?
Hrm... I'm on a plane so I can't look at the article right now, but a
separate table for timestamps doesn't sound so useful. If you had a
*lot* of events for each timestamp, maybe... since timestamps take 8
bytes you could possibly save space by referencing them with an int
instead; you would save 4 bytes per event. But you'd use at least 24
extra bytes to store the timestamp in a separate table, depending on
Postgres version and CPU architecture.
As for "does it make sense", that depends both on the data that
you're storing and how you're using it. From a space standpoint,
you'll be hard-pressed to beat a text logfile and gzip/bzip2. Even if
you need to search the data, grep can often suffice. On the other
hand, if you're doing a lot of searching or other processing, or if
you have a lot of numeric values that you can store in either int or
float4, a database makes more sense.
--
Decibel!, aka Jim C. Nasby, Database Architect decibel(at)decibel(dot)org
Give your computer some brain candy! www.distributed.net Team #1828
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