Tom,
> If the issue is to prevent Postgres *as a whole* from hogging CPU
> usage,
> I would think that nice-ing the postmaster at launch would work
> beautifully. Requests like "I want Postgres to use no more than 30%
> of CPU" make no sense to me: if the CPU is otherwise idle, why should
> you insist on reserving 70% of it for the idle loop?
<grin> That's what I asked the person who asked me. Apparently, they
want to do real-time operations without forking out for a real-time OS.
My response was "you can nice the postmaster, and simplify your
queries, but that's about it".
Thank you, everybody, for confirming this.
-Josh Berkus