Subject: DTrace docs, Open Items and Performance

From: "Simon Riggs" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 10:37:55 +0000

Robert Lor and Josh Berkus have taken up my offer to assist in
documenting the new Dynamic Trace facility more fully, which was the one
remaining item on the 8.2 Open Items list.

I'm planning to 
- add a new section to Performance Tips chapter called Dynamic Tracing 
- rename the chapter Performance & Tuning.
- add some further intro stuff on chapter header page

Comments?

-- 
  Simon Riggs             
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com

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From: Peter Eisentraut <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 12:09:26 +0100

Simon Riggs wrote:
> I'm planning to
> - add a new section to Performance Tips chapter called Dynamic
> Tracing - rename the chapter Performance & Tuning.

In my mind it's a little late for revising the documentation structure.  
I'd also think that DTrace is not a tuning tool but a monitoring tool 
which might place it closer to the description of the statistics 
collector.  I think the original plan even placed it into the Internals 
part.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/

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From: "Simon Riggs" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 11:27:24 +0000

> collector.  I think the original plan even placed it into the Internals 

An additional chapter then, in the internals section? Dynamictrace.sgml

Or a subsection in the Monitoring.sgml chapter? (with the statistics
collector stuff)

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From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 10:05:37 -0500

> collector.  I think the original plan even placed it into the Internals 

I was about to say the same.  In my mind DTrace is primarily a hacker's
tool --- I do not foresee the average DBA using it.  So it does not
belong in the Performance Tips chapter.  A new chapter under Internals
is probably as good as anything.

			regards, tom lane

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From: Robert Treat <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 19:30:31 -0500

> is probably as good as anything.

I'm not certain how best the postgresql specific probes will be used, but I 
might disagree with the above take as we're already using some kernel level 
dtrace probes to make DBA oriented tools...  see 
http://www.lethargy.org/~jesus/archives/74-PostgreSQL-performance-through-the-eyes-of-DTrace.html
for one specific example. 

-- 
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL