Re: Significantly larger toast tables on 8.4?

On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 1:32 AM, Alex Hunsaker <badalex(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 18:46, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>>
>> It would be fairly easy, I think, to add some reloption fields that
>> would let these parameters be controlled on a per-table level.
>
> +1
>
> Or something easier that just lets you use PGLZ_Strategy strategy_always_data.
>
> ALTER TABLE SET STORAGE ALWAYS_COMPRESS;
>
> Or is that way to stop gap?
>
>> Per-column would be much more painful; do we really need that?

Personally, I think the whole built-in compressor framework should be
deprecated (it's confusing and unintuitive) and replaced with a
pluggable compression family in the vein of pg_crypto. This solves a
number of issues simultaneously...we no longer have to 'guess' if the
user wants a bytea compressed or not, everything is controlled from
the client, and we can make it easier for users to use non license
compatible libraries (like lzo) in a standard way.

merlin