Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Internals of PostgreSQL

interdb.jp

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 43 posts

Re: The Internals of PostgreSQL

#31

Post by shxx »

jodrellblank wrote: post #24
paulddraper wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes the writing horrendous?

I won't comment on the OP using 'horrendous' as an adjective, but that quote seems misleading and unclear to me. Transactions (not transaction logs) are about maintaining [relational] database consistency, not directly about ensuring no data loss. A database engine would rather roll back a partially applied transaction and lose the data in it, than update one table and not update another, breaking the relation betwee…

Has your need for approval been met?

Re: The Internals of PostgreSQL

#32

Post by codepathfinder »

topherjaynes wrote: post #6
codepathfinder wrote: post #4

Thanks for sharing. I have been digging deeper around database internals and looks amazing.

Check out the CMU history of the DB class, Andy Pavlo is an amazing teacher and you really get a feel for DBs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWS8LEQAUVc&ab_channel=CMUDa... same class from 5 years ago is great because he's like well I can't get in my hotel room so I'll just record from the street https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdW5RKUboKc&t=797s&ab_channe... . Tons of good videos to go through on their youtube chan…

Thanks a ton!

Re: The Internals of PostgreSQL

#33

Post by rrr_oh_man »

paulddraper wrote: post #10
rrr_oh_man wrote: post #5

> Transaction logs are an essential part of databases because they ensure that no data is lost even when a system failure occurs. They are a history log of all changes and actions in a database system. This ensures that no data is lost due to failures, such as a power failure or a server crash. The log contains sufficient information about each transaction that has already been executed, so the database server can re…

What makes the writing horrendous?

The needless repetition. Makes it really hard to read imho. It's note a language issue but one of concise thought. I'd argue you can reduce the amount of text by 50% while retaining almost all of the information.

e.g., instead of:

Transaction logs are an essential part of databases because they ensure that no data is lost even when a system failure occurs. They are a history log of all changes and actions in a database system. This ensures that no data is lost due to failures, such as a power failure or a server crash. The log contains sufficient information about each transaction that has already been executed, so the database server can recover the database cluster by replaying the changes and actions in the transaction log in the event of a server crash.

something like:

Transaction logs keep a record of all changes in a database. This allows data recovery in case of system failures like power outages or server crashes. They store enough information to replay transactions. This can restore the database to its last consistent state.

Re: The Internals of PostgreSQL

#34

Post by rrr_oh_man »

shxx wrote: post #16
paulddraper wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes the writing horrendous?

If rrr_oh_man's profile is real ( https://bit.ly/48d9o9P ), his resume appears inconsistent and unprofessional. The emptier a person is, the more likely they are to criticize others.

Ouch. Don't take it personally. :)

Re: The Internals of PostgreSQL

#35

Post by rrr_oh_man »

shxx wrote: post #31
jodrellblank wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't comment on the OP using 'horrendous' as an adjective, but that quote seems misleading and unclear to me. Transactions (not transaction logs) are about maintaining [relational] database consistency, not directly about ensuring no data loss. A database engine would rather roll back a partially applied transaction and lose the data in it, than update one table and not update another, breaking the relation betwee…

Has your need for approval been met?

Responding to criticism of one's work with ad hominems is something I'd rather have expected on Twitter...

Why so angry?

Re: The Internals of PostgreSQL

#36

Post by rrr_oh_man »

skotobaza wrote: post #21
rrr_oh_man wrote: post #5

> Transaction logs are an essential part of databases because they ensure that no data is lost even when a system failure occurs. They are a history log of all changes and actions in a database system. This ensures that no data is lost due to failures, such as a power failure or a server crash. The log contains sufficient information about each transaction that has already been executed, so the database server can re…

How would you rephrase it? I'm also a non-native English speaker, and the bit you provided sounds very easy to understand because of how it's phrased. There are minor redundancies, but that's all I noticed...

> How would you rephrase it?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43254469

> I'm also a non-native English speaker, and the bit you provided sounds very easy to understand because of how it's phrased.

Thanks for your point. It felt to me like reading overly verbose code. Not wrong, but not effective.

Re: The Internals of PostgreSQL

#38

Post by jodrellblank »

paulddraper wrote: post #26
jodrellblank wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't comment on the OP using 'horrendous' as an adjective, but that quote seems misleading and unclear to me. Transactions (not transaction logs) are about maintaining [relational] database consistency, not directly about ensuring no data loss. A database engine would rather roll back a partially applied transaction and lose the data in it, than update one table and not update another, breaking the relation betwee…

> Transactions (not transaction logs) are about maintaining [relational] database consistency, not directly about ensuring no data loss. That seems entirely consistent with that quote. Also, tangential.

"Transaction logs ensure no data loss" and "transaction logs do not ensure no data loss" cannot be entirely consistent with each other, they are opposites. Either they do ensure, or they don't. The quote says they do. They actually don't. That's not tangential that's fundamental.

Re: The Internals of PostgreSQL

#39

Post by nimish »

majewsky wrote: post #30
nimish wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK. Every major corporation uses Outlook and there is no way I can change that so by not accepting its foibles you are artificially stopping interested contributors who would do it on company time and hardware It's a very FOSS pathology.

If by "pathology" you mean "we optimize for the comfort of the people already actively engaged in the project instead of hypothetical future contributors", I don't think this argument is as strong as you think it is. If anything, this kind of excessive legal and process red tape is much more common in enterprise-driven vs. community-driven open source projects.

No that's not what I mean, don't put words in my mouth.

> excessive legal and process red tape

I just wanna hit "Send" in my standard email client, not set up pine and debug a mail spooler

Re: The Internals of PostgreSQL

#40

Post by jodrellblank »

shxx wrote: post #31
jodrellblank wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't comment on the OP using 'horrendous' as an adjective, but that quote seems misleading and unclear to me. Transactions (not transaction logs) are about maintaining [relational] database consistency, not directly about ensuring no data loss. A database engine would rather roll back a partially applied transaction and lose the data in it, than update one table and not update another, breaking the relation betwee…

Has your need for approval been met?

No, nobody approved of my comment; since you're concerned aobut that, can you upvote it please?
Post reply on HN