Subject: Re: [HACKERS] "distributed checkpoint"
From: Simon Riggs <simon@2ndquadrant.com>
To: David Fetter <david@fetter.org>
Cc: "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com>, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>,
	Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>, pgsql-docs@postgresql.org,
	pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
In-Reply-To: <20071207034328.GB18310@fetter.org>
References: <20071206220348.GM8451@alvh.no-ip.org>
	<5958.1196991889@sss.pgh.pa.us>
	<20071206191944.1d7926d2@commandprompt.com>
	<20071207034328.GB18310@fetter.org>
Content-Type: text/plain
Date: Fri, 07 Dec 2007 18:22:10 +0000
Message-Id: <1197051730.4255.603.camel@ebony.site>
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On Thu, 2007-12-06 at 19:43 -0800, David Fetter wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 06, 2007 at 07:19:44PM -0800, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> > 
> > On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 20:44:49 -0500
> > Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> > 
> > > Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org> writes:
> > > > Am I the only one who finds the phrase "distributed checkpointing"
> > > > a bit awkward?  Would it be better if we used "time-distributed
> > > > checkpointing" instead?
> > > 
> > > Yeah, "distributed" has a bunch of connotations that are wrong for
> > > this purpose.
> > > 
> > > I spent a bit of time with a thesaurus but didn't come up with
> > > anything that seemed le mot juste.  Best I could do was "spread
> > > checkpoint" or "time-extended checkpoint".  Anybody have a better
> > > idea?
> > 
> > balanced
> > gradual
> > extended (I see you mention time-extended but wouldn't time be implicit
> > based on the actual docs and thus we only need extended?)
> 
> How about "smoothed?"

Agreed

"Smoothed" makes a lot of sense for me. We used to have a checkpoint
spike, now we don't. 

Perhaps we should say something like "time extended checkpoints provide
smoother (transaction?) response times" 

-- 
  Simon Riggs
  2ndQuadrant  http://www.2ndQuadrant.com