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From: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
To: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Subject: Re: Added documentation about caching, reliability
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 17:13:24 +0200
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Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Well, now the chapter is about WAL and reliability, so I thought
> reliability hit both topics. Also, maybe we should consider moving 
> this FAQ item into the docs:
>
>     <H3><A name="3.7">3.7</A>) What computer hardware should I
> use?</H3>

Hardware choice and configuration are important topics, but neither of 
these are strongly tied to either WAL or Reliability.  Reliability is 
the property (not a "feature") of a system to do what you meant for it 
to do.  Certainly WAL contributes to that by increasing tolerance 
against hardware failures, but it still seems to be a rather 
far-fetched connection to pair these two.

I could see hardware issues being discussed in chapter 16, since we 
already have operating system and kernel configuration there, and it's 
the chapter a user will read when setting up a server system.

I was never all that happy with the WAL chapter, since, as you say, it 
doesn't seem to be a first-class user-level feature.  I'd be happy to 
integrate it into another chapter, but I'm not sure where.

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