Re: Compression and on-disk sorting

Greg Stark <gsstark(at)mit(dot)edu> writes:
> Andrew Piskorski <atp(at)piskorski(dot)com> writes:
>> A corrolary of that is forget compression schemes like gzip - it
>> reduces data size nicely but is far too slow on the cpu to be
>> particularly useful in improving overall throughput rates.

> There are some very fast decompression algorithms:

AFAICS the only sane choice here is to use
src/backend/utils/adt/pg_lzcompress.c, on the grounds that (1) it's
already in the backend, and (2) data compression in general is such a
minefield of patents that we'd be foolish to expose ourselves in more
than one direction.

Certainly, if you can't prototype a convincing performance win using
that algorithm, it's unlikely to be worth anyone's time to look harder.

regards, tom lane