From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Randall Lucas <rlucas@tercent.net>
Cc: josh@agliodbs.com, "Mendola Gaetano" <mendola@bigfoot.com>
Cc: Achilleus Mantzios <achill@matrix.gatewaynet.com>
Cc: pgsql-sql@postgresql.org
Cc: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Cc: pgsql-bugs@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [PERFORM] [SQL] Unanswered Questions WAS: An unresolved performance problem.
Date: Thu, 08 May 2003 00:13:20 -0400
Message-ID: <17063.1052367200@sss.pgh.pa.us> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <F73D918C-80E6-11D7-A71E-000A957653D6@tercent.net>
References: <F73D918C-80E6-11D7-A71E-000A957653D6@tercent.net>
Randall Lucas <rlucas@tercent.net> writes:
> I suspect that a good number of fairly simple questions aren't being
> answered because they're either misdirected or because the poster
> hasn't included an "answerable" question (one with sufficient
> information to answer).
That's always been a problem, but it does seem to have been getting
worse lately.
> A suggestion to partially counter this, at least for "slow query" type
> questions, has been put forth. If we make it a social norm on the
> pg-lists in general to reply off-list to inadequately descriptive "slow
> query" questions with a canned message of helpful guidance, we may be
> able to up the level of "answerability" of most questions.
The idea of some canned guidance doesn't seem bad, but I'm not sure if
it should be off-list or not. If newbies are corrected off-list then
other newbies who might be lurking, or reading the archives, don't learn
any better and will make the same mistakes in their turn.
How about a standard answer of "you haven't really provided enough info
for us to be helpful, please see this-URL for some hints"? That would
avoid bulking up the list archives with many copies, yet at the same
time the archives would provide evidence of the existence of hints...
> Thoughts? Josh and I have placed a draft at
> http://techdocs.postgresql.org/guides/SlowQueryPostingGuidelines
Looks good, though I concur with Stephan's comment that the table
schemas aren't optional.
It might be worth including a checklist of the standard kinds of errors
(for example, datatype mismatch preventing index usage). Come to think
of it, that starts to make it look like a FAQ list directed towards
performance issues. Maybe we could make this a subsection of the main
FAQ?
regards, tom lane
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To: pgsql-sql@postgresql.org
Cc: tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us, rlucas@tercent.net, mendola@bigfoot.com, achill@matrix.gatewaynet.com, pgsql-performance@postgresql.org, pgsql-bugs@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [PERFORM] [SQL] Unanswered Questions WAS: An unresolved performance problem.
In-Reply-To: <17063.1052367200@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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