[HACKERS] Auto-tuning GUCS

> I do think you and others make it less likely every time you throw up big
> insoluble problems like above though. As a consequence every proposal has
> started with big overly-complex solutions trying to solve all these incidental
> issues which never go anywhere instead of simple solutions which directly
> tackle the main problem.

insoluble? overly-complex solution? parsing a text file? I do not think we understand
each other, or rather we start with totally different assumptions and design goals.
it was probably a mistake to post keeping the subject line as it is, considering I have
no interest overhauling GUCS, but this is where the subject of autotuning was brought
up and this is where I posted.

now, to me, shell access, cron jobs, text config files - or rather, a single text config
file, these are all good. if you plan to deploy/maintain entire farms or cloud solutions,
tough! you should be looking into configuration management, such as cfengine and
puppet already!

you seem to consider ease of use a prerequisite for tuning efficiency, our design goals
couldn't be more different. what you want is an installer - what I'd like is DBA support

>Coping with user and system-generated comments is one difficult part that people
>normally don't consider, dealing with bad settings the server won't start with is another.

now, as things stand, I will tinker in this area, simply because I'm stubborn and this is
part of my job. I have parsed many text files in my professional career, please do not
think a simple config file should be a problem (even with comments, I think)

The impression I get every time this comes up is that various people
have different problems they want to solve that (they think) require
redesign of the way GUC works.  Those complicated solutions arise from
attempting to satisfy N different demands simultaneously.  The fact that
many of these goals aren't subscribed to by the whole community to begin
with doesn't help to ease resolution of the issues.

in this single thread I have identified at least three different development targets:

* newbie-friendly default-guessing installer
* configuration manager for farms/clouds etc.
* auto-tuning support

this is why I'm posting this with a different subject line. If anyone wants to discuss the
GUCS auto-tuning part, I'm all ears.

regards,

Michael