Re: Overhauling GUCS

On Jun 4, 2008, at 5:23 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

> Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> writes:
>> Tom Lane wrote:
>>> * Can we build a "configuration wizard" to tell newbies what
>>> settings
>>> they need to tweak?
>
>> That would trump all the other suggestions conclusively. Anyone
>> good at
>> expert systems?
>
> How far could we get with the answers to just three questions:
>
> * How many concurrent queries do you expect to have?
>
> * How much RAM space are you willing to let Postgres use?
>
> * How much "overhead" disk space are you willing to let Postgres use?
>
> concurrent queries drives max_connections, obviously, and RAM space
> would drive shared_buffers and effective_cache_size, and both of them
> would be needed to size work_mem. The third one is a bit weird but
> I don't see any other good way to set the checkpoint parameters.
>
> If those aren't enough questions, what else must we ask? Or maybe
> they
> aren't the right questions at all --- maybe we should ask "is this a
> dedicated machine or not" and try to extrapolate everything else from
> what we (hopefully) can find out about the hardware.

I'd be interested in putting together a framework+GUI client to do this
cleanly in a cross-platform (Windows, Linux, Solaris, OS X as a bare
minimum) sort of way, if no-one else already has such a thing.

A framework doesn't get you all the way there, but it makes it a
whole lot easier to work on what base data and information you
need, and how easy it is to map pgsql-performance and #postgresql
gut feel onto something more algorithmic.

Cheers,
Steve