diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/glossary.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/glossary.sgml index d2168f26b1..eb837d4622 100644 --- a/doc/src/sgml/glossary.sgml +++ b/doc/src/sgml/glossary.sgml @@ -256,20 +256,26 @@ Buffer Access Strategy - Some operations will access a large number of pages at a time. In order to - avoid using all of shared_buffers and evicting blocks - from buffers in use by other workloads, some operations employ a - Buffer Access Strategy. A Buffer Access - Strategy sets up references to a limited number of - shared_buffers and reuses them circularly. If the - operation dirties a buffer that it then must reuse, it must write out that - buffer and any associated WAL itself. + Some operations will access a large number of + pages. A + Buffer Access Strategy helps to prevent these + these operations from evicting too many pages from + shared buffers. + + + A Buffer Access Strategy sets up references to a limited number of + shared buffers + and reuses them circularly. When the operation requires a new page, a + victim buffer is chosen from the buffers in the strategy, which may + require dirty buffers and possibly also require + WAL to be flushed to disk. - Buffer Access Strategies are used for sequential scans - of large tables, VACUUM, COPY operations, CREATE TABLE AS SELECT, ALTER - TABLE, CREATE DATABASE, CREATE INDEX, and CLUSTER, amongst other - operations. + Buffer Access Strategies are used for various operations such as; + sequential scans of large tables, VACUUM, + COPY, CREATE TABLE AS SELECT, + ALTER TABLE, CREATE DATABASE, + CREATE INDEX, and CLUSTER.