Author Archives: Jonathan Miller
There was a time when PostgreSQL’s own developers were far more open about the real cost of their MVCC design. Back in the 8.1 era, the documentation spelled out the resource drain, the vacuum overhead, and the “cold comfort” of wraparound risk in plain language. I first read that line in 2003, and it stuck with me for more than twenty years. I could not imagine any serious operations team wanting a database that required a separate background process to clean up transactions long after they had completed. PostgreSQL has absolutely improved vacuuming — autovacuum, visibility maps, HOT updates, parallel vacuum, better defaults, better alerts.
…
Continue reading “The Real Operational Cost of Vacuuming in PostgreSQL”
Benchmark results only have meaning when the workload, hardware, and methodology are clearly defined and reproducible. When those elements are unclear or incomplete, the conclusions can easily mislead readers into assuming the results represent something they do not.
That is the core issue with the recent Percona post comparing MySQL, Percona Server, and MariaDB.
This is not about disputing Percona’s numbers. Their results may be valid for their environment.
The problem is that the post presents the results in a way that implies a valid OLTP vendor comparison, while the underlying methodology and hardware make such a comparison impossible to support.
…