Re: COPY Fillfactor patch

On Wed, 2005-04-20 at 09:42 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Simon Riggs <simon@2ndquadrant.com> writes:
> > On Wed, 2005-04-20 at 09:03 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> >> My guess is that the FILLFACTOR will actually be a GUC variable rather
> >> than a clause to CREATE INDEX or REINDEX or CLUSTER.
>
> > I hope not, but it would be easier to set like that and a lot easier to
> > code up that way.
>
> I don't like that either.  It seems highly unlikely that every table in
> a database would need the same fillfactor.  It should be a per-table
> attribute, maybe with a DB-wide default, much like we handle per-column
> statistics targets.
>
> My thought about this is that the case where extra free space really
> helps is UPDATE: if heap_update can put the new tuple version on the
> same page where the old one is, there's a noticeable savings.  So what
> you'd probably want is that heap_insert respects fillfactor (ie, won't
> eat the last fillfactor percent of a page) but heap_update doesn't,
> if it can thereby put the update on the same page.  As long as you
> vacuum before a particular page is entirely filled by updates of its
> own tuples, you have a steady-state situation.

Agreed. Thats the best approach.

Best Regards, Simon Riggs