Good point. I would note this issue. Thanks for the advice :).<br /><br />Regards,<br /><br />Don<br /><br /><div
class="gmail_quote">OnWed, Feb 4, 2009 at 6:09 PM, Simon Riggs <span dir="ltr"><<a
href="mailto:simon@2ndquadrant.com">simon@2ndquadrant.com</a>></span>wrote:<br /><blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="Ih2E3d"><br
/>On Wed, 2009-02-04 at 14:42 +0800, Don Marvick wrote:<br /><br /> > 4. any other issue needs consideration?<br
/><br/></div>Most attempts to improve sorting further have fallen to nothing because<br /> of the lack of repeatable
testresults. In particular, coming up with<br /> test cases *after* writing the code is a good way to get lost in<br />
discussionsand have your work passed over.<br /><br /> The best starting point is to collect a number of test cases,
both<br/> typical and extreme cases. Do some research to show that "typical" cases<br /> really are that and be
preparedfor some expressions of reasonable<br /> doubt. Publish that data so test results can be objectively verified
and<br/> then measure those cases on existing code, with various settings of<br /> tunable parameters.<br /><br /> Then
itwill be a simple matter to prove your changes are effective in<br /> target cases without damaging other cases. We
wouldalso want the<br /> changes to work automatically without additional tunable parameters.<br /><font
color="#888888"><br/> --<br /> Simon Riggs <a href="http://www.2ndQuadrant.com"
target="_blank">www.2ndQuadrant.com</a><br/> PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support<br /><br
/></font></blockquote></div><br/>