Samuel Gendler wrote:
I was trying to make the point that, in an attempt to make things very easy for novice users, we are actually making them quite a bit more complex for novice users who want to do anything besides start the server.
People who can't start the server often abandon PostgreSQL, never come back again. And in the worst case, they popularize their frustration via blogs etc. That contributes to the perception the program is hard to use far more than people who run into problems only with performance--people expect database tuning to be non-trivial, but they have minimal tolerance for trouble when first trying to use a program. From an advocacy perspective, there is no higher priority than making sure things work as smoothly as feasible for people who have never run PostgreSQL before. Changing the software so it doesn't work out of the box on a system with minimal shared memory defaults, as seen on Linux and other operating systems, would be one of the worst possible changes to the database anyone could make.
About once a month now I came across someone who used my pgtune program: https://github.com/gregs1104/pgtune to get a reasonable starting configuration. That program is still rough and has limitations, but the general idea turns out to work just fine. I'm bored with discussions about making this easier for users unless they involve people volunteering to help with the coding needed to turn that, or something better than it, into a release quality tool. The path to sort this out is mapped out in excruciating detail from my perspective. The only thing missing are code contributors with time to walk down it. So far it's me, occasional code refinement from Matt Harrison, some packager help, and periodic review from people like Josh Berkus. And that's just not good enough to make progress on this particular front quickly enough.
-- Greg Smith 2ndQuadrant US greg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Baltimore, MD PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support www.2ndQuadrant.us "PostgreSQL 9.0 High Performance": http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/books -- Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance
