On Mon, 2006-10-02 at 14:40 -0400, Oisin Glynn wrote:
> As an aside to the "[GENERAL] Advantages of PostgreSQL" thread going on
> today, I have wondered why the initial on install config of PostgreSQL
> is (according to most posts) very conservative. I can see how this
> would be a plus when people may be getting PostgreSQL as part of an OS
> in the Linux world who may never/rarely use it.
>
> I know that in reality tuning and sizing all of the parameters is a very
> database specific thing, but it would seem that if some default choices
> would be available it would give those testing/evaluation and trying to
> get started a shot at quicker progress. Obviously they would still need
> to tune to your own application.
>
> Some dreadfully named, possibly pointless options?
>
> Unoptimized / low performance - Low load on Server (The current out
> of the box)
Keep in mind that PostgreSQL doesn't really restrict itself as a whole.
If you set the settings too low, and throw costly queries at it, the
load on the server will be very high. We don't want to imply that
PostgreSQL's settings restrict it's cpu, memory, or disk usage as a
whole.
> Production Non Dedicated - PostgreSQL is one of the apps sharing
> server but is important.
> Production Dedicated Server - The only purpose of this box is to run
> PostgreSQL
>
In my opinion, this is more the job of distributions packaging it.
Distributions have these advantages when they are choosing the settings:
(1) They have more information about the target computer
(2) They have more information about the intended use of the system as a
whole
(3) They have more ability to ask questions of the user
PostgreSQL itself can't easily do those things in a portable way. If
someone is compiling from source, it is more reasonable to expect them
to know what settings to use.
However, that said, I think that distributions certainly do take a cue
from the default settings in the source distribution. That's why lately
the default settings have been growing more aggressive with each
release.
Regards,
Jeff Davis