Re: [HACKERS] pgbench regression test failure

Hello Tom,

>>> 2. ISTM that we should report that 100% of the transactions were
>>> above the latency limit, not 33%; that is, the appropriate base
>>> for the "number of transactions above the latency limit" percentage
>>> is the number of actual transactions not the number of scheduled
>>> transactions.
>
>> Hmmm. Allow me to disagree.
>
> I dunno, it just looks odd to me that when we've set up a test case in
> which every one of the transactions is guaranteed to exceed the latency
> limit, that it doesn't say that they all did.  I don't particularly buy
> your assumption that the percentages should sum.

This is a side effect. The reason for me is that the user asked for some 
transactions, and the results should be given relative to what was asked.

> Anybody else have an opinion there?

Good question.

>>> I also noticed that if I specify "-f sleep-100.sql" more than once,
>>> the per-script TPS reports are out of line.  This is evidently because
>>> that calculation isn't excluding skipped xacts; but if we're going to
>>> define tps as excluding skipped xacts, surely we should do so there too.
>
>> I do not think that we should exclude skipped xacts.
>
> Uh ... why not?

Because I totally misinterpreted your sentence.

Indeed, the skipped transactions needs to be substracted from the count.
This is yet another bug.

>>> but I find that unduly optimistic.  It should really read more like
>>> "if no transactions were executed, at best we'll get some platform-
>>> dependent spelling of NaN.  At worst we'll get a SIGFPE."
>
>> Hmmm. Alas you must be right about spelling. There has been no report of
>> SIGFPE issue, so I would not bother with that.
>
> The core issue here really is that you're assuming IEEE float arithmetic.
> We have not gone as far as deciding that Postgres will only run on IEEE
> hardware, and I don't want to start in pgbench, especially not in
> seldom-exercised corner cases.

Hmmm. It has already started for some years without complaint. Do as you 
feel about NaN. I can only say that I do not like much having zero to 
stand for undefined.

-- 
Fabien.