On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 2:42 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote: > Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> writes: >> On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 8:23 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote: >>> FWIW, I agree with Bruce that using "degree" here is a poor choice. >>> It's an unnecessary dependence on technical terminology that many people >>> will not be familiar with. > >> FWIW, SQL Server calls it "degree of parallelism" as well ( >> https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188611(v=sql.105).aspx). And >> their configuration option is "max degree of parallelism": >> https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181007(v=sql.105).aspx. > > Yes, but both they and Oracle appear to consider "degree" to mean the > total number of processors used, not the number of secondary jobs in > addition to the main one. The only thing worse than employing obscure > technical terminology is employing it incorrectly: that way, you get to > confuse both the users who know what it means and those who don't.
This is not so clear-cut as you are making it out to be. For example, see http://www.akadia.com/services/ora_parallel_processing.html - viz "The number of parallel slave processes associated with an operation is called its degree of parallelism", which is pretty close to what the parameter currently called max_parallel_degree actually does.
So maybe something like session_parallel_degree, to add another color to the bikeshed?