Re: [PATCHES] pg_freespacemap question

Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com>

From: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com>
To: Mark Kirkwood <markir@paradise.net.nz>
Cc: Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au>, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, Tatsuo Ishii <ishii@sraoss.co.jp>, peter_e@gmx.net, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org, pgsql-patches@postgresql.org
Date: 2006-03-13T13:44:12Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
Mark Kirkwood wrote:
> Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:
> >>The point here is that if tuples require 50 bytes, and there are 20
> >>bytes free on a page, pgstattuple counts 20 free bytes while FSM
> >>ignores the page.  Recording that space in the FSM will not improve
> >>matters, it'll just risk pushing out FSM records for pages that do
> >>have useful amounts of free space.
> >
> >Maybe an overloaded pgstattuple function that allows you to request FSM 
> >behavior?
> 
> That's a nice idea - could also do equivalently by adding an extra 
> column "usable_free_space" or some such, and calculating this using FSM 
> logic.

The current pgstattuple function scans the whole table, so I don't think
this is a good idea.  Re: the overloaded function, I think the behaviors
are different enough to merit a separate function, with a different
name.

-- 
Alvaro Herrera                                http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.