Re: glossary Data page

Yaroslav Saburov <y.saburov@gmail.com>

From: Yaroslav Saburov <y.saburov@gmail.com>
To: "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>
Cc: pgsql-docs@lists.postgresql.org
Date: 2026-06-30T15:04:53Z
Lists: pgsql-docs
Maybe these are just the intricacies of translation.
This is how I interpret it:

1) All pages are the same size.
2) Data pages are usually stored on disk,
3) each in a separate file, 

> 1) All pages are of the same size.
> 2) Data pages are typically stored on disk
> 3) each in a specific file,

> 30 черв. 2026 р. о 16:28 David G. Johnston <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> пише:
> 
> On Sunday, June 28, 2026, PG Doc comments form <noreply@postgresql.org> wrote:
>> The following documentation comment has been logged on the website:
>> 
>> Page: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/18/glossary.html
>> Description:
>> 
>> > The basic structure used to store relation data. All pages are of the same
>> size. Data pages are typically stored on disk, each in a specific file, and
>> can be read to shared buffers where they can be modified, becoming dirty.
>> They become clean when written to disk. New pages, which initially exist in
>> memory only, are also dirty until written.
>> 
>> Am I correct in understanding from this description that all files on the
>> disk will be the same size?
>> One page = one file?
> 
> No.  A page is an atomic unit subset of a file.  Files contain many pages.  It would be crazy to limit file sizes to 8kb when we have GB available.
> 
> David J.