Re: [BUGS] BUG #14244: wrong suffix for pg_size_pretty()

Today, i found the time to read all the mails in this thread, and i think i have to explain, why we decided to open a bug for this behavior.

Pn Tuesday, 23. August 2016, 13:30:29 Robert Haas wrote:
> J. Random User: I'm having a problem!
> Mailing List: Gee, how big are your tables?
> J. Random User: Here's some pg_size_pretty output.
> Mailing List: Gosh, we don't know what that means, what do you have
> this obscure GUC set to?
> J. Random User: Maybe I'll just give up on SQL and use MongoDB.

In fact, we had just the other way around. One of our most critical databases had some extreme bloat.
Some of our internal customers was very confused, about the sizes reported by the database.
This confusion has led to wrong decisions. (And a long discussion about the choice of DBMS btw)

I think there is a point missing in this whole discussion, or i just didn't see it:

Yeah, the behavior of "kB" is defined in the "postgresql.conf" documentation.
But no _user_ reads this. There is no link or hint in the documentation of "pg_size_pretty()" [1].

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.5/static/functions-admin.html#FUNCTIONS-ADMIN-DBSIZE

--
Thomas Berger

PostgreSQL DBA
Database Operations

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