Re: Rename max_parallel_degree?

Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com>

From: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>, PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2016-04-25T18:58:04Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
Tom Lane wrote:
> Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> writes:
> > On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 8:23 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> >> FWIW, I agree with Bruce that using "degree" here is a poor choice.
> >> It's an unnecessary dependence on technical terminology that many people
> >> will not be familiar with.
> 
> > FWIW, SQL Server calls it "degree of parallelism" as well (
> > https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188611(v=sql.105).aspx). And
> > their configuration option is "max degree of parallelism":
> > https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181007(v=sql.105).aspx.
> 
> Yes, but both they and Oracle appear to consider "degree" to mean the
> total number of processors used, not the number of secondary jobs in
> addition to the main one.  The only thing worse than employing obscure
> technical terminology is employing it incorrectly:

What about calling it something even simpler, such as "max_parallelism"?
This avoids such cargo cult, and there's no implication that it's
per-query.

-- 
Álvaro Herrera                http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services