Re: why vacuum

On Wed, 26 Oct 2005 15:14, Tom Lane wrote:
> Kenneth Gonsalves <lawgon(at)thenilgiris(dot)com> writes:
> > (A MySQueeeel guy said, not Kenneth)...
> > 'I wouldnt commit mission critical data to a database that needs to be
> > vacuumed once a week'.
My two-penneth worth...<flamage>
I wouldn't commit mission critical data to a database (or DBA) that doesn't
have a concept of vacuuming (or desire to do it regularly). But, less
flamingly, I wouldn't commit mission-critical data to something that lacked
the ability to have proper constraints, triggers and server-side procedures
to ensure the data actually remains sensible. Note that Sybase/MS-SQL's
check constraint model asserts the constraint BEFORE the trigger, which
discourages you from attempting to check and handle meaning of data!</flamage>

> This guy is not worth arguing with.
D'Accord!

> > So why does pg need vacuum?
For (inter alia) the same reason that
* Oracle has an ANALYZE_SCHEMA and DBMS_SPACE_ADMIN
and (hoist by his own petard)
* MySQueeeeaL has myisamchk --stats_method=method_name --analyze

<flamage>Oh, well: MySQL bigot and internal consistency? whadya expect?</flamage>

Dave Bath
(Oracle DBA for health/telcos way back in 1986: honeywrong GCOS and Pr1mos)
--
David T. Bath
dave(dot)bath(at)unix(dot)net