Hello Nathan,
>> I'm unclear about what variety of scripts that could be provided given the
>> tables made available with pgbench. ISTM that other scenari would involve
>> both an initialization and associated scripts, and any proposal would be
>> bared because it would open the door to anything.
>
> Why's that?
Just a wild guess based on 19 years of occasional contributions to pg and
pgbench in particular:-)
> I'm not aware of any project policy that prohibits such enhancements to
> pgbench.
Attempts in extending pgbench often fall under "you can do it outside (eg
with a custom script) so there is no need to put that in pgbench as it
would add to the maintenance burden with a weak benefit proven by the fact
that it is not there already".
> It might take some effort to gather consensus on a proposal like this,
> but IMHO that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
Done it in the past. Probably will do it again in the future:-)
> If the prevailing wisdom is that we shouldn't add more built-in scripts
> because there is an existing way to provide custom ones, then it's not
> clear that we should proceed with $SUBJECT, anyway.
I'm afraid there is that argument. I do not think that this policy is good
wrt $SUBJECT, ISTM that having an easy way to test something with a
PL/pgSQL function would help promote the language by advertising/showing
the potential performance benefit (or not, depending). Just one function
would be enough for that.
--
Fabien.