Re: NOLOGGING option, or ?

Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Cc: Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu>, Neil Conway <neilc@samurai.com>, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@surnet.cl>, Simon Riggs <simon@2ndquadrant.com>, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Date: 2005-06-01T22:32:32Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> One idea would be to look at the table file size first.  If it has zero
> blocks, lock the table and if it still has zero blocks, do the no-WAL
> copy.

I think that's a bad idea.  It would make the behavior unpredictable
--- sometimes a COPY will take an exclusive lock, and other times not;
and the reason why is at a lower semantic level than the user is
supposed to know about.

Before you say "this is not important", consider the nontrivial risk
that the stronger lock will cause a deadlock failure.  I don't think
that it's acceptable for lock strength to be unpredictable.

			regards, tom lane