To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu>, Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>,
	pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: What needs to be done for real Partitioning?
References: <200503191202.38089.josh@agliodbs.com>
	<87br9ehmja.fsf@stark.xeocode.com> <8164.1111341510@sss.pgh.pa.us>
	<87oedeezb8.fsf@stark.xeocode.com> <14201.1111359925@sss.pgh.pa.us>
In-Reply-To: <14201.1111359925@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu>
Organization: The Emacs Conspiracy; member since 1992
Date: 20 Mar 2005 22:33:12 -0500
Message-ID: <87acoxfzbb.fsf@stark.xeocode.com>
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Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> writes:

> Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu> writes:
> > You could argue for some sort of setup where you could take a partition
> > "offline" during which you could safely do things like export or manipulate
> > the data. But that's awfully limiting. What if I want to do things like add
> > columns, or change data types, or any other manipulation that breaks the
> > symmetry with the production partitioned table.
> 
> [ scrapes eyebrows off ceiling... ]  You don't really expect to be able
> to do that kind of thing to just one partition do you?

Well no. That's exactly why I would want to pull the partition out of the
partitioned table so that I can then do whatever work I need to archive it
without affecting the partitioned table.

Take an analogous situation. I have a huge log file I want to rotate. The
quickest most efficient way to do this would be to move it aside, HUP the
daemon (or whatever else I have to do to get it to open a new file) then gzip
and archive the old log files.

-- 
greg