Re: Postgres refusing to use >1 core

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 



On 05/11/2011 02:53 PM, gnuoytr@xxxxxxx wrote:

So, the $64 question:  how did you find an engagement where, to bend
Shakespeare, "first thing we do, is kill all the coders" isn't
required?

It's just one of those things you have to explain. Not just how to fix it, but *why* doing so fixes it. It's also not really a fair expectation in a lot of ways. Even when a coder uses all SQL, their inexperience in the engine can still ruin performance. We spend years getting to know PostgreSQL, or just general DB techniques. They do the same with coding. And unless they're a developer for a very graphics intensive project, they're probably not well acquainted with set theory.

Just today, I took a query like this:

  UPDATE customer c
     SET c.login_counter = a.counter
    FROM (SELECT session_id, count(*) as counter
            FROM session
           WHERE date_created >= CURRENT_DATE
           GROUP BY session_id) a
   WHERE c.process_date = CURRENT_DATE
     AND c.customer_id = a.session_id

And suggested this instead:

  CREATE TEMP TABLE tmp_login_counts AS
  SELECT session_id, count(1) AS counter
    FROM auth_token_arc
   WHERE date_created >= CURRENT_DATE
   GROUP BY session_id

  UPDATE reporting.customer c
     SET login_counter = a.counter
    FROM tmp_login_counts a
   WHERE c.process_date = CURRENT_DATE
     AND c.customer_id = a.session_id

The original query, with our very large tables, ran for over *two hours* thanks to a nested loop iterating over the subquery. My replacement ran in roughly 30 seconds. If we were using a newer version of PG, we could have used a CTE. But do you get what I mean? Temp tables are a fairly common technique, but how would a coder know about CTEs? They're pretty new, even to *us*.

We hold regular Lunch'n'Learns for our developers to teach them the good/bad of what they're doing, and that helps significantly. Even hours later, I see them using the techniques I showed them. The one I'm presenting soon is entitled '10 Ways to Ruin Performance' and they're all specific examples taken from day-to-day queries and jobs here, all from different categories of mistake. It's just a part of being a good DBA.

--
Shaun Thomas
OptionsHouse | 141 W. Jackson Blvd. | Suite 800 | Chicago IL, 60604
312-676-8870
sthomas@xxxxxxxxx

______________________________________________

See  http://www.peak6.com/email_disclaimer.php
for terms and conditions related to this email

--
Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance


[Postgresql General]     [Postgresql PHP]     [PHP Users]     [PHP Home]     [PHP on Windows]     [Kernel Newbies]     [PHP Classes]     [PHP Books]     [PHP Databases]     [Yosemite]

  Powered by Linux