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From: dg@illustra.com (David Gould)
Message-Id: <9806142235.AA07922@hawk.illustra.com>
Subject: [HACKERS] performance tests, initial results
To: pgsql-hackers@postgreSQL.org
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 15:35:13 -0700 (PDT)
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I have been playing a little with the performance tests found in
pgsql/src/tests/performance and have a few observations that might be of
minor interest.

The tests themselves are simple enough although the result parsing in the
driver did not work on Linux. I am enclosing a patch below to fix this. I
think it will also work better on the other systems.

A summary of results from my testing are below. Details are at the bottom
of this message.

My test system is 'leslie':

 linux 2.0.32, gcc version 2.7.2.3
 P133, HX chipset, 512K L2, 32MB mem
 NCR810 fast scsi, Quantum Atlas 2GB drive (7200 rpm).


                     Results Summary (times in seconds)

                    Single txn 8K txn    Create 8K idx 8K random Simple
Case Description    8K insert  8K insert Index  Insert Scans     Orderby
=================== ========== ========= ====== ====== ========= =======
1 From Distribution
  P90 FreeBsd -B256      39.56   1190.98   3.69  46.65     65.49    2.27
  IDE

2 Running on leslie
  P133 Linux 2.0.32      15.48    326.75   2.99  20.69     35.81    1.68
  SCSI 32M

3 leslie, -o -F
  no forced writes       15.90     24.98   2.63  20.46     36.43    1.69

4 leslie, -o -F
  no ASSERTS             14.92     23.23   1.38  18.67     33.79    1.58

5 leslie, -o -F -B2048
  more buffers           21.31     42.28   2.65  25.74     42.26    1.72

6 leslie, -o -F -B2048
  more bufs, no ASSERT   20.52     39.79   1.40  24.77     39.51    1.55




                 Case to Case Difference Factors (+ is faster)

                    Single txn 8K txn    Create 8K idx 8K random Simple
Case Description    8K insert  8K insert Index  Insert Scans     Orderby
=================== ========== ========= ====== ====== ========= =======

leslie vs BSD P90.        2.56      3.65   1.23   2.25      1.83    1.35

(noflush -F) vs no -F    -1.03     13.08   1.14   1.01     -1.02    1.00

No Assert vs Assert       1.05      1.07   1.90   1.06      1.07    1.09

-B256 vs -B2048           1.34      1.69   1.01   1.26      1.16    1.02


Observations:

 - leslie (P133 linux) appears to be about 1.8 times faster than the
   P90 BSD system used for the test result distributed with the source, not
   counting the 8K txn insert case which was completely disk bound.

 - SCSI disks make a big (factor of 3.6) difference. During this test the
   disk was hammering and cpu utilization was < 10%.

 - Assertion checking seems to cost about 7% except for create index where
   it costs 90%

 - the -F option to avoid flushing buffers has tremendous effect if there are
   many very small transactions. Or, another way, flushing at the end of the
   transaction is a major disaster for performance.

 - Something is very wrong with our buffer cache implementation. Going from
   256 buffers to 2048 buffers costs an average of 25%. In the 8K txn case
   it costs about 70%. I see looking at the code and profiling that in the 8K
   txn case this is in BufferSync() which examines all the buffers at commit
   time. I don't quite understand why it is so costly for the single 8K row
   txn (35%) though.

It would be nice to have some more tests. Maybe the Wisconsin stuff will
be useful.



----------------- patch to test harness. apply from pgsql ------------
*** src/test/performance/runtests.pl.orig	Sun Jun 14 11:34:04 1998

Differences %


----------------- patch to test harness. apply from pgsql ------------
*** src/test/performance/runtests.pl.orig	Sun Jun 14 11:34:04 1998
--- src/test/performance/runtests.pl	Sun Jun 14 12:07:30 1998
***************
*** 84,123 ****
  open (STDERR, ">$TmpFile") or die;
  select (STDERR); $| = 1;
  
! for ($i = 0; $i <= $#perftests; $i++)
! {
  	$test = $perftests[$i];
  	($test, $XACTBLOCK) = split (/ /, $test);
  	$runtest = $test;
! 	if ( $test =~ /\.ntm/ )
! 	{
! 		# 
  		# No timing for this queries
- 		# 
  		close (STDERR);		# close $TmpFile
  		open (STDERR, ">/dev/null") or die;
  		$runtest =~ s/\.ntm//;
  	}
! 	else
! 	{
  		close (STDOUT);
  		open(STDOUT, ">&SAVEOUT");
  		print STDOUT "\nRunning: $perftests[$i+1] ...";
  		close (STDOUT);
  		open (STDOUT, ">/dev/null") or die;
  		select (STDERR); $| = 1;
! 		printf "$perftests[$i+1]: ";
  	}
  
  	do "sqls/$runtest";
  
  	# Restore STDERR to $TmpFile
! 	if ( $test =~ /\.ntm/ )
! 	{
  		close (STDERR);
  		open (STDERR, ">>$TmpFile") or die;
  	}
- 
  	select (STDERR); $| = 1;
  	$i++;
  }
--- 84,116 ----
  open (STDERR, ">$TmpFile") or die;
  select (STDERR); $| = 1;
  
! for ($i = 0; $i <= $#perftests; $i++) {
  	$test = $perftests[$i];
  	($test, $XACTBLOCK) = split (/ /, $test);
  	$runtest = $test;
! 	if ( $test =~ /\.ntm/ ) {
  		# No timing for this queries
  		close (STDERR);		# close $TmpFile
  		open (STDERR, ">/dev/null") or die;
  		$runtest =~ s/\.ntm//;
  	}
! 	else {
  		close (STDOUT);
  		open(STDOUT, ">&SAVEOUT");
  		print STDOUT "\nRunning: $perftests[$i+1] ...";
  		close (STDOUT);
  		open (STDOUT, ">/dev/null") or die;
  		select (STDERR); $| = 1;
! 		print "$perftests[$i+1]: ";
  	}
  
  	do "sqls/$runtest";
  
  	# Restore STDERR to $TmpFile
! 	if ( $test =~ /\.ntm/ ) {
  		close (STDERR);
  		open (STDERR, ">>$TmpFile") or die;
  	}
  	select (STDERR); $| = 1;
  	$i++;
  }
***************
*** 128,138 ****
  open (TMPF, "<$TmpFile") or die;
  open (RESF, ">$ResFile") or die;
  
! while (<TMPF>)
! {
! 	$str = $_;
! 	($test, $rtime) = split (/:/, $str);
! 	($tmp, $rtime, $rest) = split (/[ 	]+/, $rtime);
! 	print RESF "$test: $rtime\n";
  }
  
--- 121,130 ----
  open (TMPF, "<$TmpFile") or die;
  open (RESF, ">$ResFile") or die;
  
! while (<TMPF>) {
!         if (m/^(.*: ).* ([0-9:.]+) *elapsed/) {
! 	    ($test, $rtime) = ($1, $2);
! 	     print RESF $test, $rtime, "\n";
!         }
  }

------------------------------------------------------------------------

  
------------------------- testcase detail --------------------------
   
1. from distribution
   DBMS:		PostgreSQL 6.2b10
   OS:		FreeBSD 2.1.5-RELEASE
   HardWare:	i586/90, 24M RAM, IDE
   StartUp:	postmaster -B 256 '-o -S 2048' -S
   Compiler:	gcc 2.6.3
   Compiled:	-O, without CASSERT checking, with
   		-DTBL_FREE_CMD_MEMORY (to free memory
   		if BEGIN/END after each query execution)
   DB connection startup: 0.20
   8192 INSERTs INTO SIMPLE (1 xact): 39.58
   8192 INSERTs INTO SIMPLE (8192 xacts): 1190.98
   Create INDEX on SIMPLE: 3.69
   8192 INSERTs INTO SIMPLE with INDEX (1 xact): 46.65
   8192 random INDEX scans on SIMPLE (1 xact): 65.49
   ORDER BY SIMPLE: 2.27
   
   
2. run on leslie with asserts
   DBMS:		PostgreSQL 6.3.2 (plus changes to 98/06/01)
   OS:		Linux 2.0.32 leslie
   HardWare:	i586/133 HX 512, 32M RAM, fast SCSI, 7200rpm
   StartUp:	postmaster -B 256 '-o -S 2048' -S
   Compiler:	gcc 2.7.2.3
   Compiled:	-O, WITH CASSERT checking, with
   		-DTBL_FREE_CMD_MEMORY (to free memory
   		if BEGIN/END after each query execution)
   DB connection startup: 0.10
   8192 INSERTs INTO SIMPLE (1 xact): 15.48
   8192 INSERTs INTO SIMPLE (8192 xacts): 326.75
   Create INDEX on SIMPLE: 2.99
   8192 INSERTs INTO SIMPLE with INDEX (1 xact): 20.69
   8192 random INDEX scans on SIMPLE (1 xact): 35.81
   ORDER BY SIMPLE: 1.68
   
   
3. with -F to avoid forced i/o
   DBMS:		PostgreSQL 6.3.2 (plus changes to 98/06/01)
   OS:		Linux 2.0.32 leslie
   HardWare:	i586/133 HX 512, 32M RAM, fast SCSI, 7200rpm
   StartUp:	postmaster -B 256 '-o -S 2048 -F' -S
   Compiler:	gcc 2.7.2.3
   Compiled:	-O, WITH CASSERT checking, with
   		-DTBL_FREE_CMD_MEMORY (to free memory
   		if BEGIN/END after each query execution)
   DB connection startup: 0.10
   8192 INSERTs INTO SIMPLE (1 xact): 15.90
   8192 INSERTs INTO SIMPLE (8192 xacts): 24.98
   Create INDEX on SIMPLE: 2.63
   8192 INSERTs INTO SIMPLE with INDEX (1 xact): 20.46
   8192 random INDEX scans on SIMPLE (1 xact): 36.43
   ORDER BY SIMPLE: 1.69
   
   
4. no asserts, -F to avoid forced I/O
   DBMS:		PostgreSQL 6.3.2 (plus changes to 98/06/01)
   OS:		Linux 2.0.32 leslie
   HardWare:	i586/133 HX 512, 32M RAM, fast SCSI, 7200rpm
   StartUp:	postmaster -B 256 '-o -S 2048' -S
   Compiler:	gcc 2.7.2.3
   Compiled:	-O, No CASSERT checking, with
   		-DTBL_FREE_CMD_MEMORY (to free memory
   		if BEGIN/END after each query execution)
   DB connection startup: 0.10
   8192 INSERTs INTO SIMPLE (1 xact): 14.92
   8192 INSERTs INTO SIMPLE (8192 xacts): 23.23
   Create INDEX on SIMPLE: 1.38
   8192 INSERTs INTO SIMPLE with INDEX (1 xact): 18.67
   8192 random INDEX scans on SIMPLE (1 xact): 33.79
   ORDER BY SIMPLE: 1.58
   
   
5. with more buffers (2048 vs 256) and -F to avoid forced i/o
   DBMS:		PostgreSQL 6.3.2 (plus changes to 98/06/01)
   OS:		Linux 2.0.32 leslie
   HardWare:	i586/133 HX 512, 32M RAM, fast SCSI, 7200rpm
   StartUp:	postmaster -B 2048 '-o -S 2048 -F' -S
   Compiler:	gcc 2.7.2.3
   Compiled:	-O, WITH CASSERT checking, with
   		-DTBL_FREE_CMD_MEMORY (to free memory
   		if BEGIN/END after each query execution)
   DB connection startup: 0.11
   8192 INSERTs INTO SIMPLE (1 xact): 21.31
   8192 INSERTs INTO SIMPLE (8192 xacts): 42.28
   Create INDEX on SIMPLE: 2.65
   8192 INSERTs INTO SIMPLE with INDEX (1 xact): 25.74
   8192 random INDEX scans on SIMPLE (1 xact): 42.26
   ORDER BY SIMPLE: 1.72
   
   
6. No Asserts, more buffers (2048 vs 256) and -F to avoid forced i/o
   DBMS:		PostgreSQL 6.3.2 (plus changes to 98/06/01)
   OS:		Linux 2.0.32 leslie
   HardWare:	i586/133 HX 512, 32M RAM, fast SCSI, 7200rpm
   StartUp:	postmaster -B 2048 '-o -S 2048 -F' -S
   Compiler:	gcc 2.7.2.3
   Compiled:	-O, No CASSERT checking, with
   		-DTBL_FREE_CMD_MEMORY (to free memory
   		if BEGIN/END after each query execution)
   DB connection startup: 0.11
   8192 INSERTs INTO SIMPLE (1 xact): 20.52
   8192 INSERTs INTO SIMPLE (8192 xacts): 39.79
   Create INDEX on SIMPLE: 1.40
   8192 INSERTs INTO SIMPLE with INDEX (1 xact): 24.77
   8192 random INDEX scans on SIMPLE (1 xact): 39.51
   ORDER BY SIMPLE: 1.55
---------------------------------------------------------------------

-dg

David Gould            dg@illustra.com           510.628.3783 or 510.305.9468 
Informix Software  (No, really)         300 Lakeside Drive  Oakland, CA 94612
"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas.  If your ideas are any
 good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." -- Howard Aiken


From owner-pgsql-hackers@hub.org Tue Oct 19 10:31:10 1999
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To: "Hiroshi Inoue" <Inoue@tpf.co.jp>
cc: "Vadim Mikheev" <vadim@krs.ru>, pgsql-hackers@postgreSQL.org
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] mdnblocks is an amazing time sink in huge relations 
In-reply-to: Your message of Tue, 19 Oct 1999 19:03:22 +0900 
             <000801bf1a19$2d88ae20$2801007e@cadzone.tpf.co.jp> 
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 10:09:15 -0400
Message-ID: <9036.940342155@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Sender: owner-pgsql-hackers@postgreSQL.org
Status: RO

"Hiroshi Inoue" <Inoue@tpf.co.jp> writes:
> 1. shared cache holds committed system tuples.
> 2. private cache holds uncommitted system tuples.
> 3. relpages of shared cache are updated immediately by
>     phisical change and corresponding buffer pages are
>     marked dirty.
> 4. on commit, the contents of uncommitted tuples except
>    relpages,reltuples,... are copied to correponding tuples
>    in shared cache and the combined contents are
>    committed.
> If so,catalog cache invalidation would be no longer needed.
> But synchronization of the step 4. may be difficult.

I think the main problem is that relpages and reltuples shouldn't
be kept in pg_class columns at all, because they need to have
very different update behavior from the other pg_class columns.

The rest of pg_class is update-on-commit, and we can lock down any one
row in the normal MVCC way (if transaction A has modified a row and
transaction B also wants to modify it, B waits for A to commit or abort,
so it can know which version of the row to start from).  Furthermore,
there can legitimately be several different values of a row in use in
different places: the latest committed, an uncommitted modification, and
one or more old values that are still being used by active transactions
because they were current when those transactions started.  (BTW, the
present relcache is pretty bad about maintaining pure MVCC transaction
semantics like this, but it seems clear to me that that's the direction
we want to go in.)

relpages cannot operate this way.  To be useful for avoiding lseeks,
relpages *must* change exactly when the physical file changes.  It
matters not at all whether the particular transaction that extended the
file ultimately commits or not.  Moreover there can be only one correct
value (per relation) across the whole system, because there is only one
length of the relation file.

If we want to take reltuples seriously and try to maintain it
on-the-fly, then I think it needs still a third behavior.  Clearly
it cannot be updated using MVCC rules, or we lose all writer
concurrency (if A has added tuples to a rel, B would have to wait
for A to commit before it could update reltuples...).  Furthermore
"updating" isn't a simple matter of storing what you think the new
value is; otherwise two transactions adding tuples in parallel would
leave the wrong answer after B commits and overwrites A's value.
I think it would work for each transaction to keep track of a net delta
in reltuples for each table it's changed (total tuples added less total
tuples deleted), and then atomically add that value to the table's
shared reltuples counter during commit.  But that still leaves the
problem of how you use the counter during a transaction to get an
accurate answer to the question "If I scan this table now, how many tuples
will I see?"  At the time the question is asked, the current shared
counter value might include the effects of transactions that have
committed since your transaction started, and therefore are not visible
under MVCC rules.  I think getting the correct answer would involve
making an instantaneous copy of the current counter at the start of
your xact, and then adding your own private net-uncommitted-delta to
the saved shared counter value when asked the question.  This doesn't
look real practical --- you'd have to save the reltuples counts of
*all* tables in the database at the start of each xact, on the off
chance that you might need them.  Ugh.  Perhaps someone has a better
idea.  In any case, reltuples clearly needs different mechanisms than
the ordinary fields in pg_class do, because updating it will be a
performance bottleneck otherwise.

If we allow reltuples to be updated only by vacuum-like events, as
it is now, then I think keeping it in pg_class is still OK.

In short, it seems clear to me that relpages should be removed from
pg_class and kept somewhere else if we want to make it more reliable
than it is now, and the same for reltuples (but reltuples doesn't
behave the same as relpages, and probably ought to be handled
differently).

			regards, tom lane

************

From owner-pgsql-hackers@hub.org Tue Oct 19 21:25:30 1999
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From: "Hiroshi Inoue" <Inoue@tpf.co.jp>
To: "Tom Lane" <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: <pgsql-hackers@postgreSQL.org>
Subject: RE: [HACKERS] mdnblocks is an amazing time sink in huge relations 
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 10:09:13 +0900
Message-ID: <000501bf1a97$b925a860$2801007e@cadzone.tpf.co.jp>
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Status: RO

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hiroshi Inoue [mailto:Inoue@tpf.co.jp]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 1999 6:45 PM
> To: Tom Lane
> Cc: pgsql-hackers@postgreSQL.org
> Subject: RE: [HACKERS] mdnblocks is an amazing time sink in huge
> relations 
> 
> 
> > 
> > "Hiroshi Inoue" <Inoue@tpf.co.jp> writes:
> 
> [snip]
>  
> > 
> > > Deletion is necessary only not to consume disk space.
> > >
> > > For example vacuum could remove not deleted files.
> > 
> > Hmm ... interesting idea ... but I can hear the complaints
> > from users already...
> >
> 
> My idea is only an analogy of PostgreSQL's simple recovery
> mechanism of tuples.
> 
> And my main point is
> 	"delete fails after commit" doesn't harm the database
> 	except that not deleted files consume disk space.
> 
> Of cource,it's preferable to delete relation files immediately
> after(or just when) commit.
> Useless files are visible though useless tuples are invisible.
>

Anyway I don't need "DROP TABLE inside transactions" now
and my idea is originally for that issue.

After a thought,I propose the following solution.

1. mdcreate() couldn't create existent relation files.
    If the existent file is of length zero,we would overwrite
    the file.(seems the comment in md.c says so but the
    code doesn't do so). 
    If the file is an Index relation file,we would overwrite
    the file.

2. mdunlink() couldn't unlink non-existent relation files.
    mdunlink() doesn't call elog(ERROR) even if the file
    doesn't exist,though I couldn't find where to change
    now.
    mdopen() doesn't call elog(ERROR) even if the file
    doesn't exist and leaves the relation as CLOSED. 

Comments ?

Regards. 

Hiroshi Inoue
Inoue@tpf.co.jp

************

From pgsql-hackers-owner+M6267@hub.org Sun Aug 27 21:46:37 2000
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To: pgsql-hackers@postgreSQL.org
Subject: [HACKERS] Possible performance improvement: buffer replacement policy
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2000 20:05:29 -0400
Message-ID: <1601.967421129@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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Those of you with long memories may recall a benchmark that Edmund Mergl
drew our attention to back in May '99.  That test showed extremely slow
performance for updating a table with many indexes (about 20).  At the
time, it seemed the problem was due to bad performance of btree with
many equal keys, so I thought I'd go back and retry the benchmark after
this latest round of btree hackery.

The good news is that btree itself seems to be pretty well fixed; the
bad news is that the benchmark is still slow for large numbers of rows.
The problem is I/O: the CPU mostly sits idle waiting for the disk.
As best I can tell, the difficulty is that the working set of pages
needed to update this many indexes is too large compared to the number
of disk buffers Postgres is using.  (I was running with -B 1000 and
looking at behavior for a 100000-row test table.  This gave me a table
size of 3876 pages, plus 11526 pages in 20 indexes.)

Of course, there's only so much we can do when the number of buffers
is too small, but I still started to wonder if we are using the buffers
as effectively as we can.  Some tracing showed that most of the pages
of the indexes were being read and written multiple times within a
single UPDATE query, while most of the pages of the table proper were
fetched and written only once.  That says we're not using the buffers
as well as we could; the index pages are not being kept in memory when
they should be.  In a query like this, we should displace main-table
pages sooner to allow keeping more index pages in cache --- but with
the simple LRU replacement method we use, once a page has been loaded
it will stay in cache for at least the next NBuffers (-B) page
references, no matter what.  With a large NBuffers that's a long time.

I've come across an interesting article:
	The LRU-K Page Replacement Algorithm For Database Disk Buffering
	Elizabeth J. O'Neil, Patrick E. O'Neil, Gerhard Weikum
	Proceedings of the 1993 ACM SIGMOD international conference
	on Management of Data, May 1993
(If you subscribe to the ACM digital library, you can get a PDF of this
from there.)  This article argues that standard LRU buffer management is
inherently not great for database caches, and that it's much better to
replace pages on the basis of time since the K'th most recent reference,
not just time since the most recent one.  K=2 is enough to get most of
the benefit.  The big win is that you are measuring an actual page
interreference time (between the last two references) and not just
dealing with a lower-bound guess on the interreference time.  Frequently
used pages are thus much more likely to stay in cache.

It looks like it wouldn't take too much work to replace shared buffers
on the basis of LRU-2 instead of LRU, so I'm thinking about trying it.

Has anyone looked into this area?  Is there a better method to try?

			regards, tom lane

From prlw1@newn.cam.ac.uk Fri Jan 19 12:54:45 2001
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Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 17:53:28 +0000
From: Patrick Welche <prlw1@newn.cam.ac.uk>
To: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Cc: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, pgsql-hackers@postgreSQL.org
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Possible performance improvement: buffer replacement policy
Message-ID: <20010119175328.A6223@quartz.newn.cam.ac.uk>
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Status: RO

On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 12:03:58PM -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> 
> Tom, did we ever test this?  I think we did and found that it was the
> same or worse, right?

(Funnily enough, I just read that message:)

To: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
cc: pgsql-hackers@postgreSQL.org
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Possible performance improvement: buffer replacement policy 
In-reply-to: <200010161541.LAA06653@candle.pha.pa.us> 
References: <200010161541.LAA06653@candle.pha.pa.us>
Comments: In-reply-to Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
	message dated "Mon, 16 Oct 2000 11:41:41 -0400"
Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2000 11:49:52 -0400
Message-ID: <26100.971711392@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
>> It looks like it wouldn't take too much work to replace shared buffers
>> on the basis of LRU-2 instead of LRU, so I'm thinking about trying it.
>> 
>> Has anyone looked into this area?  Is there a better method to try?

> Sounds like a perfect idea.  Good luck.  :-)

Actually, the idea went down in flames :-(, but I neglected to report
back to pghackers about it.  I did do some code to manage buffers as
LRU-2.  I didn't have any good performance test cases to try it with,
but Richard Brosnahan was kind enough to re-run the TPC tests previously
published by Great Bridge with that code in place.  Wasn't any faster,
in fact possibly a little slower, likely due to the extra CPU time spent
on buffer freelist management.  It's possible that other scenarios might
show a better result, but right now I feel pretty discouraged about the
LRU-2 idea and am not pursuing it.

			regards, tom lane


From pgsql-hackers-owner+M3455@postgresql.org Fri Jan 19 13:18:12 2001
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From: "Mikheev, Vadim" <vmikheev@SECTORBASE.COM>
To: "'Tom Lane'" <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Cc: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: RE: [HACKERS] Possible performance improvement: buffer replacemen
	t policy 
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 10:07:27 -0800
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> > Tom, did we ever test this?  I think we did and found that 
> > it was the same or worse, right?
> 
> I tried it and didn't see any noticeable improvement on the particular
> test case I was using, so I got discouraged and didn't pursue the idea
> further.  I'd like to come back to it someday, though.

I don't know how much useful could be LRU-2 but with WAL we should try
to reuse undirty free buffers first, not dirty ones, just to postpone
writes as long as we can. (BTW, this is what Oracle does.)
So, we probably should put new unfree dirty buffer just before first
dirty one in LRU.

Vadim

From markw@mohawksoft.com Thu Jun  7 14:40:02 2001
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Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2001 14:36:59 -0400
From: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>
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To: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>,
   "pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: 7.2 items
References: <200106071503.f57F32n03924@candle.pha.pa.us>
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Status: RO

Bruce Momjian wrote:

> > Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> >
> > > Here is a small list of big TODO items.  I was wondering which ones
> > > people were thinking about for 7.2?
> >
> > A friend of mine wants to use PostgreSQL instead of Oracle for a large
> > application, but has run into a snag when speed comparisons looked
> > good until the Oracle folks added a couple of BITMAP indexes.  I can't
> > recall seeing any discussion about that here -- are there any plans?
>
> It is not on our list and I am not sure what they do.

Do you have access to any Oracle Documentation? There is a good explanation
of them.

However, I will try to explain.

If you have a table, locations. It has 1,000,000 records.

In oracle you do this:

create bitmap index bitmap_foo on locations (state) ;

For each unique value of 'state' oracle will create a bitmap with 1,000,000
bits in it. With a one representing a match and a zero representing no
match. Record '0' in the table is represented by bit '0' in the bitmap,
record '1' is represented by bit '1', record two by bit '2' and so on.

In a table where comparatively few different values are to be indexed in a
large table, a bitmap index can be quite small and not suffer the N * log(N)
disk I/O most tree based indexes suffer. If the bitmap is fairly sparse or
dense (or have periods of denseness and sparseness), it can be compressed
very efficiently as well.

When the statement:

select * from locations where state = 'MA';

Is executed, the bitmap is read into memory in very few disk operations.
(Perhaps even as few as one or two). It is a simple operation of rifling
through the bitmap for '1's that indicate the record has the property,
'state' = 'MA';


From mascarm@mascari.com Thu Jun  7 15:36:25 2001
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From: Mike Mascari <mascarm@mascari.com>
Reply-To: "mascarm@mascari.com" <mascarm@mascari.com>
To: "'mlw'" <markw@mohawksoft.com>, Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>,
   "pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: RE: [HACKERS] Re: 7.2 items
Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001 15:34:17 -0400
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And in addition,

If you submitted the query:

SELECT * FROM addresses WHERE state = 'OH'
AND areacode = '614'

Then, with bitmap indexes, the bitmaps are just logically ANDed 
together, and the final bitmap determines the matching rows.

Mike Mascari
mascarm@mascari.com

-----Original Message-----
From:	mlw [SMTP:markw@mohawksoft.com]

Bruce Momjian wrote:

> > Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> >
> > > Here is a small list of big TODO items.  I was wondering which 
ones
> > > people were thinking about for 7.2?
> >
> > A friend of mine wants to use PostgreSQL instead of Oracle for a 
large
> > application, but has run into a snag when speed comparisons 
looked
> > good until the Oracle folks added a couple of BITMAP indexes.  I 
can't
> > recall seeing any discussion about that here -- are there any 
plans?
>
> It is not on our list and I am not sure what they do.

Do you have access to any Oracle Documentation? There is a good 
explanation
of them.

However, I will try to explain.

If you have a table, locations. It has 1,000,000 records.

In oracle you do this:

create bitmap index bitmap_foo on locations (state) ;

For each unique value of 'state' oracle will create a bitmap with 
1,000,000
bits in it. With a one representing a match and a zero representing 
no
match. Record '0' in the table is represented by bit '0' in the 
bitmap,
record '1' is represented by bit '1', record two by bit '2' and so 
on.

In a table where comparatively few different values are to be indexed 
in a
large table, a bitmap index can be quite small and not suffer the N * 
log(N)
disk I/O most tree based indexes suffer. If the bitmap is fairly 
sparse or
dense (or have periods of denseness and sparseness), it can be 
compressed
very efficiently as well.

When the statement:

select * from locations where state = 'MA';

Is executed, the bitmap is read into memory in very few disk 
operations.
(Perhaps even as few as one or two). It is a simple operation of 
rifling
through the bitmap for '1's that indicate the record has the 
property,
'state' = 'MA';



From oleg@sai.msu.su Thu Jun  7 15:39:15 2001
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Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001 22:38:20 +0300 (GMT)
From: Oleg Bartunov <oleg@sai.msu.su>
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To: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>
cc: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>,
   "pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Re: 7.2 items
In-Reply-To: <3B1FC9CB.57C72AD6@mohawksoft.com>
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Status: RO

I think it's possible to implement bitmap indexes with a little
effort using GiST. at least I know one implementation
http://www.it.iitb.ernet.in/~rvijay/dbms/proj/
if you have interests you could implement bitmap indexes yourself
unfortunately, we're very busy

	Oleg
On Thu, 7 Jun 2001, mlw wrote:

> Bruce Momjian wrote:
>
> > > Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> > >
> > > > Here is a small list of big TODO items.  I was wondering which ones
> > > > people were thinking about for 7.2?
> > >
> > > A friend of mine wants to use PostgreSQL instead of Oracle for a large
> > > application, but has run into a snag when speed comparisons looked
> > > good until the Oracle folks added a couple of BITMAP indexes.  I can't
> > > recall seeing any discussion about that here -- are there any plans?
> >
> > It is not on our list and I am not sure what they do.
>
> Do you have access to any Oracle Documentation? There is a good explanation
> of them.
>
> However, I will try to explain.
>
> If you have a table, locations. It has 1,000,000 records.
>
> In oracle you do this:
>
> create bitmap index bitmap_foo on locations (state) ;
>
> For each unique value of 'state' oracle will create a bitmap with 1,000,000
> bits in it. With a one representing a match and a zero representing no
> match. Record '0' in the table is represented by bit '0' in the bitmap,
> record '1' is represented by bit '1', record two by bit '2' and so on.
>
> In a table where comparatively few different values are to be indexed in a
> large table, a bitmap index can be quite small and not suffer the N * log(N)
> disk I/O most tree based indexes suffer. If the bitmap is fairly sparse or
> dense (or have periods of denseness and sparseness), it can be compressed
> very efficiently as well.
>
> When the statement:
>
> select * from locations where state = 'MA';
>
> Is executed, the bitmap is read into memory in very few disk operations.
> (Perhaps even as few as one or two). It is a simple operation of rifling
> through the bitmap for '1's that indicate the record has the property,
> 'state' = 'MA';
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives?
>
> http://www.postgresql.org/search.mpl
>

	Regards,
		Oleg
_____________________________________________________________
Oleg Bartunov, sci.researcher, hostmaster of AstroNet,
Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow University (Russia)
Internet: oleg@sai.msu.su, http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/
phone: +007(095)939-16-83, +007(095)939-23-83


From pgsql-general-owner+M2497@hub.org Fri Jun 16 18:31:03 2000
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To: Jurgen Defurne <defurnj@glo.be>
cc: Mark Stier <kalium@gmx.de>,
        postgreSQL general mailing list <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] optimization by removing the file system layer? 
In-Reply-To: Message from Jurgen Defurne <defurnj@glo.be> 
   of "Thu, 15 Jun 2000 20:26:57 +0200." <39491FF1.E1E583F8@glo.be> 
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 19:52:28 +1000
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Status: OR



> I think that the Un*x filesystem is one of the reasons that large
> database vendors rather use raw devices, than filesystem storage
> files.

This used to be the preference, back in the late 80s and possibly
early 90s.  I'm seeing a preference toward using the filesystem now,
possibly with some sort of async I/O and co-operation from the OS
filesystem about interactions with the filesystem cache.

Performance preferences don't stand still.  The hardware changes, the
software changes, the volume of data changes, and different solutions
become preferable.

> Using a raw device on the disk gives them the possibility to have
> complete control over their files, indices and objects without being
> bothered by the operating system.
>
> This speeds up things in several ways :
> - the least possible OS intervention

Not that this is especially useful, necessarily.  If the "raw" device
is in fact managed by a logical volume manager doing mirroring onto
some sort of storage array there is still plenty of OS code involved.

The cost of using a filesystem in addition may not be much if anything
and of course a filesystem is considerably more flexible to
administer (backup, move, change size, check integrity, etc.)

> - choose block sizes according to applications
> - reducing fragmentation
> - packing data in nearby cilinders

... but when this storage area is spread over multiple mechanisms in a
smart storage array with write caching, you've no idea what is where
anyway.  Better to let the hardware or at least the OS manage this;
there are so many levels of caching between a database and the
magnetic media that working hard to influence layout is almost
certainly a waste of time.

Kirk McKusick tells a lovely story that once upon a time it used to be
sensible to check some registers on a particular disk controller to
find out where the heads were when scheduling I/O.  Needless to say,
that is history now!

There's a considerable cost in complexity and code in using "raw"
storage too, and it's not a one off cost: as the technologies change,
the "fast" way to do things will change and the code will have to be
updated to match.  Better to leave this to the OS vendor where
possible, and take advantage of the tuning they do.

> - Anyone other ideas -> the sky is the limit here

> It also aids portability, at least on platforms that have an
> equivalent of a raw device.

I don't understand that claim.  Not much is portable about raw
devices, and they're typically not nearlly as well documented as the
filesystem interfaces.

> It is also independent of the standard implemented Un*x filesystems,
> for which you will have to pay extra if you want to take extra
> measures against power loss.

Rather, it is worse.  With a Unix filesystem you get quite defined
semantics about what is written when.

> The problem with e.g. e2fs, is that it is not robust enough if a CPU
> fails.

ext2fs doesn't even claim to have Unix filesystem semantics.

Regards,

Giles



From pgsql-hackers-owner+M1795@postgresql.org Thu Dec  7 18:47:52 2000
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Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 14:57:32 -0800
From: Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net>
To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: [HACKERS] Patches with vacuum fixes available for 7.0.x
Message-ID: <20001207145732.X16205@fw.wintelcom.net>
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We recently had a very satisfactory contract completed by
Vadim.

Basically Vadim has been able to reduce the amount of time
taken by a vacuum from 10-15 minutes down to under 10 seconds.

We've been running with these patches under heavy load for
about a week now without any problems except one:
  don't 'lazy' (new option for vacuum) a table which has just
  had an index created on it, or at least don't expect it to
  take any less time than a normal vacuum would.

There's three patchsets and they are available at:

http://people.freebsd.org/~alfred/vacfix/

complete diff:
http://people.freebsd.org/~alfred/vacfix/v.diff

only lazy vacuum option to speed up index vacuums:
http://people.freebsd.org/~alfred/vacfix/vlazy.tgz

only lazy vacuum option to only scan from start of modified
data:
http://people.freebsd.org/~alfred/vacfix/mnmb.tgz

Although the patches are for 7.0.x I'm hoping that they
can be forward ported (if Vadim hasn't done it already)
to 7.1.

enjoy!

-- 
-Alfred Perlstein - [bright@wintelcom.net|alfred@freebsd.org]
"I have the heart of a child; I keep it in a jar on my desk."

From pgsql-hackers-owner+M1809@postgresql.org Thu Dec  7 20:27:39 2000
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From: Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
cc: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Patches with vacuum fixes available for 7.0.x
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* Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> [001207 17:10] wrote:
> Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net> writes:
> > Basically Vadim has been able to reduce the amount of time
> > taken by a vacuum from 10-15 minutes down to under 10 seconds.
> 
> Cool.  What's it do, exactly?

================================================================

The first is a bonus that Vadim gave us to speed up index
vacuums, I'm not sure I understand it completely, but it 
work really well. :)

here's the README he gave us:

           Vacuum LAZY index cleanup option

LAZY vacuum option introduces new way of indices cleanup.
Instead of reading entire index file to remove index tuples
pointing to deleted table records, with LAZY option vacuum
performes index scans using keys fetched from table record
to be deleted. Vacuum checks each result returned by index
scan if it points to target heap record and removes
corresponding index tuple.
This can greatly speed up indices cleaning if not so many
table records were deleted/modified between vacuum runs.
Vacuum uses new option on user' demand.

New vacuum syntax is:

vacuum [verbose] [analyze] [lazy] [table [(columns)]]

================================================================

The second is one of the suggestions I gave on the lists a while
back, keeping track of the "last dirtied" block in the data files
to only scan the tail end of the file for deleted rows, I think
what he instead did was keep a table that holds all the modified
blocks and vacuum only scans those:

              Minimal Number Modified Block (MNMB)

This feature is to track MNMB of required tables with triggers
to avoid reading unmodified table pages by vacuum. Triggers
store MNMB in per-table files in specified directory
($LIBDIR/contrib/mnmb by default) and create these files if not
existed.

Vacuum first looks up functions

mnmb_getblock(Oid databaseId, Oid tableId)
mnmb_setblock(Oid databaseId, Oid tableId, Oid block)

in catalog. If *both* functions were found *and* there was no
ANALYZE option specified then vacuum calls mnmb_getblock to obtain
MNMB for table being vacuumed and starts reading this table from
block number returned. After table was processed vacuum calls
mnmb_setblock to update data in file to last table block number.
Neither mnmb_getblock nor mnmb_setblock try to create file.
If there was no file for table being vacuumed then mnmb_getblock
returns 0 and mnmb_setblock does nothing.
mnmb_setblock() may be used to set in file MNMB to 0 and force
vacuum to read entire table if required.

To compile MNMB you have to add -DMNMB to CUSTOM_COPT
in src/Makefile.custom.

-- 
-Alfred Perlstein - [bright@wintelcom.net|alfred@freebsd.org]
"I have the heart of a child; I keep it in a jar on my desk."

From pgsql-general-owner+M4010@postgresql.org Mon Feb  5 18:50:47 2001
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From: Mike Hoskins <mikehoskins@yahoo.com>
X-Newsgroups: comp.databases.postgresql.general
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] MySQL file system
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 18:30:36 -0600
Organization: Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
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This idea is such a popular (even old) one that Oracle developed it for 8i --
IFS.  Yep, AS/400 has had it forever, and BeOS is another example.  Informix has
had its DataBlades for years, as well.  In fact, Reiser-FS is an FS implemented
on a DB, albeit probably not a SQL DB.  AIX's LVM and JFS is extent/DB-based, as
well. Let's see now, why would all those guys do that?  (Now, some of those that
aren't SQL-based probably won't allow SQL queries on files, so just think about
those that do, for a minute)....

Rather than asking why, a far better question is why not?  There is SO much
functionality to be gained here that it's silly to ask why.  At a higher level,
treating BLOBs as files and as DB entries simultaneously has so many uses, that
one has trouble answering the question properly without the puzzled stare back
at the questioner.  Again, look at the above list, particularly at AS/400 -- the
entire OS's FS sits on top of DB/2!

For example, think how easy dynamically generated web sites could access online
catalog information, with all those JPEG's, GIFs, PNGs, HTML files, Text files,
.PDF's, etc., both in the DB and in the FS.  This would be so much easier to
maintain, when you have webmasters, web designers, artists, programmers,
sysadmins, dba's, etc., all trying to manage a big, dynamic, graphics-rich web
site.  Who cares if the FS is a bit slow, as long as it's not too slow?  That's
not the point, anyway.

The point is easy access to data:  asset management, version control, the
ability to access the same data as a file and as a BLOB simultaneously, the
ability to replicate easier, the ability to use more tools on the same info,
etc.  It's not for speed, per se; instead, it's for accessibility.

Think about this issue.  You have some already compiled text-based program that
works on binary files, but not on databases -- it was simply never designed into
the program.  How are you going to get your graphics BLOBs into that program?
Oh yeah, let's write another program to transform our data into files, first,
then after processing delete them in some cleanup routine....  Why?  If you have
a DB'ed FS, then file data can simultaneously have two views -- one for the DB
and one as an FS.  (You can easily reverse the scenario.)  Not only does this
save time and disk space; it saves you from having to pay for the most expensive
element of all -- programmer time.

BTW, once this FS-on-a-DB concept really sinks in, imagine how tightly
integrated Linux/Unix apps could be written.  Imagine if a bunch of GPL'ed
software started coding for this and used this as a means to exchange data, all
using a common set of libraries.  You could get to the point of uniting files,
BLOBs, data of all sorts, IPC, version control, etc., all under one umbrella,
especially if XML was the means data was exchanged.  Heck, distributed
authentication, file access, data access, etc., could be improved greatly.
Well, this paragraph sounds like flame bait, but really consider the
ramifications.  Also, read the next paragraph....

Something like this *has* existed for Postgres for a long time -- PGFS, by Brian
Bartholomew.  It's even supposedly matured with age.  Unfortunately, I cannot
get to http://www.wv.com/ (Working Version's main site).  Working Version is a
version control system that keeps old versions of files around in the FS.  It
uses PG as the back-end DB and lets you mount it like another FS.  It's
supposedly an awesome system, but where is it?  It's not some clunky korbit
thingy, either.  (If someone can find it, please let me know by email, if
possible.)

The only thing I can find on this is from a Google search, which caches
everything but the actual software:

http://www.google.com/search?q=pgfs+postgres&num=100&hl=en&lr=lang_en&newwindow=1&safe=active

Also, there is the Perl-FS that can be transformed into something like PGFS:
http://www.assurdo.com/perlfs/  It allows you to write Perl code that can mount
various protocols or data types as an FS, in user space.  (One example is the
ability to mount FTP sites, BTW.)

Instead of ridiculing something you've never tried, consider that MySQL-FS,
Oracle (IFS), Informix (DataBlades), AS/400 (DB/2), BeOS, and Reiser-FS are
doing this today.  Do you want to be left behind and let them tell us what it's
good for?  Or, do we want this for PG?  (Reiser-FS, BTW, is FASTER than ext2,
but has no SQL hooks).

There were many posts on this on slashdot:
    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/01/16/1855253&mode=thread
    (I wrote some comments here, as well, just look for mikehoskins)

I, for one, want to see this succeed for MySQL, PostgreSQL, msql, etc.  It's an
awesome feature that doesn't need to be speedy because it can save HUMANS time.

The question really is, "When do we want to catch up to everyone else?"  We are
always moving to higher levels of abstraction, anyway, so it's just a matter of
time.  PG should participate.


Adam Lang wrote:

> I wasn't following the thread too closely, but database for a filesystem has
> been done.  BeOS uses a database for a filesystem as well as AS/400 and
> Mainframes.
>
> Adam Lang
> Systems Engineer
> Rutgers Casualty Insurance Company
> http://www.rutgersinsurance.com
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Alfred Perlstein" <bright@wintelcom.net>
> To: "Robert D. Nelson" <RDNELSON@co.centre.pa.us>
> Cc: "Joseph Shraibman" <jks@selectacast.net>; "Karl DeBisschop"
> <karl@debisschop.net>; "Ned Lilly" <ned@greatbridge.com>; "PostgreSQL
> General" <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2001 12:23 PM
> Subject: Re: [GENERAL] MySQL file system
>
> > * Robert D. Nelson <RDNELSON@co.centre.pa.us> [010117 05:17] wrote:
> > > >Raw disk access allows:
> > >
> > > If I'm correct, mysql is providing a filesystem, not a way to access raw
> > > disk, like Oracle does. Huge difference there - with a filesystem, you
> have
> > > overhead of FS *and* SQL at the same time.
> >
> > Oh, so it's sort of like /proc for mysql?
> >
> > What a terrible waste of time and resources. :(
> >
> > --
> > -Alfred Perlstein - [bright@wintelcom.net|alfred@freebsd.org]
> > "I have the heart of a child; I keep it in a jar on my desk."


From pgsql-general-owner+M4049@postgresql.org Tue Feb  6 01:26:19 2001
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From: Lincoln Yeoh <lyeoh@pop.jaring.my>
Subject: [GENERAL] Re: MySQL file system
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What you're saying seems to be to have a data structure where the same data
can be accessed in both the filesystem style and the RDBMs style. How does
that work? How is the mapping done between both structures? Slapping a
filesystem on top of a RDBMs doesn't do that does it?

Most filesystems are basically databases already, just differently
structured and featured databases. And so far most of them do their job
pretty well. You move a folder/directory somewhere, and everything inside
it moves. Tons of data are already arranged in that form. Though porting
over data from one filesystem to another is not always straightforward,
RDBMSes are far worse.

Maybe what would be nice is not a filesystem based on a database, rather
one influenced by databases. One with a decent fulltextindex for data and
filenames, where you have the option to ignore or not ignore
nonalphanumerics and still get an indexed search.

Then perhaps we could do something like the following:

select file.name from path "/var/logs/" where file.name like "%.log%' and
file.lastmodified > '2000/1/1' and file.contents =~ 'te_st[0-9]+\.gif$' use
index

Checkpoints would be nice too. Then I can rollback to a known point if I
screw up ;).

In fact the SQL style interface doesn't have to be built in at all. Neither
does the index have to be realtime. I suppose there could be an option to
make it realtime if performance is not an issue. 

What could be done is to use some fast filesystem. Then we add tools to
maintain indexes, for SQL style interfaces and other style interfaces.
Checkpoints and rollbacks would be harder of course.

Cheerio,
Link.


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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Bitmap indexes?
From: Greg Copeland <greg@CopelandConsulting.Net>
To: Matthew Kirkwood <matthew@hairy.beasts.org>
cc: Oleg Bartunov <oleg@sai.msu.su>,
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On Tue, 2002-03-19 at 15:30, Matthew Kirkwood wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Mar 2002, Oleg Bartunov wrote:
>=20
> Sorry to reply over you, Oleg.
>=20
> > On 13 Mar 2002, Greg Copeland wrote:
> >
> > > One of the reasons why I originally stated following the hackers list=
 is
> > > because I wanted to implement bitmap indexes.  I found in the archive=
s,
> > > the follow link, http://www.it.iitb.ernet.in/~rvijay/dbms/proj/, which
> > > was extracted from this,
> > > http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=3Den&threadm=3D01C0EF67.5105D2E0.m=
ascarm%40mascari.com&rnum=3D1&prev=3D/groups%3Fq%3Dbitmap%2Bindex%2Bgroup:c=
omp.databases.postgresql.hackers%26hl%3Den%26selm%3D01C0EF67.5105D2E0.masca=
rm%2540mascari.com%26rnum%3D1, archive thread.
>=20
> For every case I have used a bitmap index on Oracle, a
> partial index[0] made more sense (especialy since it
> could usefully be compound).

That's very true, however, often bitmap indexes are used where partial
indexes may not work well.  It maybe you were trying to apply the cure
for the wrong disease.  ;)

>=20
> Our troublesome case (on Oracle) is a table of "events"
> where maybe fifty to a couple of hundred are "published"
> (ie. web-visible) at any time.  The events are categorised
> by sport (about a dozen) and by "event type" (about five).
> We never really query events except by PK or by sport/type/
> published.

The reason why bitmap indexes are primarily used for DSS and data
wherehousing applications is because they are best used on extremely
large to very large tables which have low cardinality (e.g, 10,000,000
rows having 200 distinct values).  On top of that, bitmap indexes also
tend to be much smaller than their "standard" cousins.  On large and
very tables tables, this can sometimes save gigs in index space alone
(serious space benefit).  Plus, their small index size tends to result
in much less I/O (serious speed benefit).  This, of course, can result
in several orders of magnitude speed improvements when index scans are
required.  As an added bonus, using AND, OR, XOR and NOT predicates are
exceptionally fast and if implemented properly, can even take advantage
of some 64-bit hardware for further speed improvements.  This, of
course, further speeds look ups.  The primary down side is that inserts
and updates to bitmap indexes are very costly (comparatively) which is,
yet again, why they excel in read-only environments (DSS & data
wherehousing).

It should also be noted that RDMS's, such as Oracle, often use multiple
types of bitmap indexes.  This further impedes insert/update
performance, however, the additional bitmap index types usually allow
for range predicates while still making use of the bitmap index.  If I'm
not mistaken, several other types of bitmaps are available as well as
many ways to encode and compress (rle, quad compression, etc) bitmap
indexes which further save on an already compact indexing scheme.

Given the proper problem domain, index bitmaps can be a big win.

>=20
> We make a bitmap index on "published", and trust Oracle to
> use it correctly, and hope that our other indexes are also
> useful.
>=20
> On Postgres[1] we would make a partial compound index:
>=20
> create index ... on events(sport_id,event_type_id)
> where published=3D'Y';


Generally speaking, bitmap indexes will not serve you very will on
tables having a low row counts, high cardinality or where they are
attached to tables which are primarily used in an OLTP capacity.=20
Situations where you have a low row count and low cardinality or high
row count and high cardinality tend to be better addressed by partial
indexes; which seem to make much more sense.  In your example, it sounds
like you did "the right thing"(tm).  ;)


Greg


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