On Sat, Jan 06, 2007 at 09:20:53PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
> > Simon Riggs wrote:
> >> Reason for no documentation was that CREATE INDEX and CREATE TABLE AS
> >> SELECT already use this optimisation, but to my knowledge neither was/is
> >> documented on those command pages.
>
> > I wasn't aware those used the optimization. Seems they all should be
> > documented somewhere.
>
> We don't document every single optimization in the system ... if we did,
> the docs would be as big as the source code and equally unreadable by
> non-programmers. I think it's a much better idea just to mention it one
> place and not try to enumerate exactly which commands have the optimization.
I think it would be reasonable to refer to the 'tuning page' from the
appropriate pages in the documentation... I'm thinking of something
similar to the "SEE ALSO" section of man pages.
The big complain that I have (and have heard) about the docs is that
it's very hard to find something unless you know exactly what it is
you're looking for. If you don't know that there are performance
shortcuts associated with CREATE INDEX you're unlikely to find out about
them.
--
Jim Nasby jim@nasby.net
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com 512.569.9461 (cell)