Horton

Re: Significantly larger toast tables on 8.4?

Andrew Chernow <ac@esilo.com>

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From: Andrew Chernow <ac@esilo.com>
To: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
Cc: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, "Stephen R. van den Berg" <srb@cuci.nl>, Alex Hunsaker <badalex@gmail.com>, PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2009-01-03T05:17:16Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers 
Robert Haas wrote:
> 
> Compression is
> generally bad for performance, though there are certainly exceptions.
> What it is good for is saving disk space, and that is why people use
> it.
> 

I don't think disk space is still the primary reason for using compression; 
shoot.. I can buy a terabyte drive for $150 on newegg and 1.5TB drives are out. 
  I think the primary reason has been slowly moving towards performance.  Fast 
downloads, compressed web sites or simply reading/writing less to/from disk are 
very common use cases for compression; all increase performance.  Basically, 
compression comonly offers faster data delivery.  As long as you utilize a fast 
compressor, like lzo or zlib "NOT level 9", its a performance win.

-- 
Andrew Chernow
eSilo, LLC
every bit counts
http://www.esilo.com/