>>>>> "BW" == Bruno Wolff, <Bruno> writes:
>> to see it incremental. This would result in pretty much near zero
>> internal fragmentation, I think.
BW> Why do you care about about the details of the implementation (rather than
BW> the performance)? If it were faster to do it that way, that's how it would
BW> have been done in the first place. The cost of doing the above is almost
BW> certainly going to be an overall performance loser.
I care for the performance. And how are you so sure that it was
faster the way it is now? Are you sure it was not done this way
because of ease of implementation?
Seriously, how much slower can it be if the backend were to do the
checking for external references upon updating/deleting a row? The
cost would be distributed across time as opposed to concentrated at
once within a vacuum process. I am fairly certian it would reduce
disk bandwidth requirements since at least one necessary page will
already be in memory.