Re: CPU costs of random_zipfian in pgbench

Fabien COELHO <coelho(at)cri(dot)ensmp(dot)fr> writes:
>> I'm trying to use random_zipfian() for benchmarking of skewed data sets,
>> and I ran head-first into an issue with rather excessive CPU costs.

> If you want skewed but not especially zipfian, use exponential which is
> quite cheap. Also zipfian with a > 1.0 parameter does not have to compute
> the harmonic number, so it depends in the parameter.

Maybe we should drop support for parameter values < 1.0, then. The idea
that pgbench is doing something so expensive as to require caching seems
flat-out insane from here. That cannot be seen as anything but a foot-gun
for unwary users. Under what circumstances would an informed user use
that random distribution rather than another far-cheaper-to-compute one?

> ... This is why I submitted a pseudo-random permutation
> function, which alas does not get much momentum from committers.

TBH, I think pgbench is now much too complex; it does not need more
features, especially not ones that need large caveats in the docs.
(What exactly is the point of having zipfian at all?)

regards, tom lane