Re: where should I stick that backup?

On Fri, Apr 17, 2020 at 7:44 PM Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> wrote:
> This suggest that pipes do have a considerably higher overhead on
> windows, but that it's not all that terrible if one takes care to use
> large buffers in each pipe element.
>
> It's notable though that even the simplest use of a pipe does add a
> considerable overhead compared to using the files directly.

Thanks for these results. I think that this shows that it's probably
not a great idea to force everything to go through pipes in every
case, but on the other hand, there's no reason to be a particularly
scared of the performance implications of letting some things go
through pipes. For instance, if we decide that LZ4 compression is
going to be a good choice for most users, we might want to do that
in-process rather than via pipes. However, if somebody wants to pipe
through an external compressor that they prefer, that's going to be a
little slower, but not necessarily to a degree that creates big
problems. People with bigger databases will need to be more careful
about which options they choose, but that's kind of inevitable.

Do you agree?

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company