Re: Feedback on getting rid of VACUUM FULL

>Well, Andrew McNamara just posted today:
>http://archives.postgresql.org/message-id/20090916063341.0735C5AC0D6@longblack.object-craft.com.au
>
>Had VACUUM FULL not been available, though, I'm pretty sure he would've
>come up with something else instead.

Indeed I would have. And it was our own slackness that got us into
the situation.

Several people suggested using a portable drive - in this case, it would
not have been practical as the machines are physically managed by another
group at a remote location (the paperwork would be the real blocker).
Getting more drives added to the SAN would have been even more painful.

>I was just going to post that we should make a decision about this,
>because ISTM there's some code in Simon's hot standby patch that is only
>required to support VACUUM FULL. If we make the decision that we drop
>VACUUM FULL in 8.5, we can take that part out of the patch now. It's not
>a huge amount of code, but still.
>
>I'm in favor of removing VACUUM FULL in 8.5. To replace it, we should offer:
>
>1) VACUUM REWRITE, which is like CLUSTER but doesn't use an index, and

My preference would be to keep the VACUUM FULL command, but to reimplement
it as a table rewriter (like CLUSTER?).

I see little risk to changing the behaviour without changing the name -
only experts are currently aware exactly what it actually does, and they
are more likely to keep an eye out for changes like this.

--
Andrew McNamara, Senior Developer, Object Craft
http://www.object-craft.com.au/