> I'm new to postgresql, and as you suggested, this is
> counter-intuitive to me. I would have thought that having to store
> all the inserts to be able to roll them back would take longer. Is
> my thinking wrong or not relevant? Why is this not the case?
Typically that is the case. But Postgresql switches it around a little
bit. Different trade-offs. No rollback log, but other processes are
forced to go through you're left over garbage (hence 'vacuum').
It's still kinda slow with hundreds of connections (as compared to
Oracle) -- but close enough that a license fee -> hardware purchase
funds transfer more than makes up for it.
Get yourself a 1GB battery backed ramdisk on it's own scsi chain for WAL
and it'll fly no matter what size of transaction you use ;)
--
Rod Taylor <rbt@rbt.ca>