Re: [HACKERS] What I'm working on

> On Sun, 23 Aug 1998, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>
> > Most filesystem base block sizes are 8k. Making anything larger is not
> > going to gain much. I don't think we can support block sizes like 12k
> > because the filesystem is going to sync stuff in 8k chunks.
> >
> > Seems like we should do the most user-transparent thing and just allow
> > spanning rows.
>
> The blocksize patch wasn't a "user-land" feature, its an admin
> level...no? The admin sets it at the createdb level...no?

Yes, OK, admin, not user.

>
> Again, I'm curious as to why either/or is mutual exclusive?
>
> Let's put it this way, from a performance perspective, which one
> would provide more? Again, I'm thinking of this from the admin angle, not
> user. I create a database whose tuples, in general, exceed 8k. vacuum
> kindly tells me this, so, to improve performance, I dump my databases, and
> because this is a specialized application, its on its own file system.
> So, I reformat that drive with a larger blocksize, to match the blocksize
> I'm about to set my database to (yes, I do do similar to this to optimize
> file systems for news, so it isn't too hypothetical)...
>
> Bear in mind, I am not arguing for one of them, I'm arguing for
> both of them...unless there is some architectural reason why both can't be
> implemented at the same time...?

Yes, I guess you could have both. I just think the normal user is going
to prefer the span stuff better, but you have a good point. If we had
one, we could buy time getting the other.

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