dtrace discuss - Aug 2006 - USDT probes in PostgreSQL

For the PostgreSQL users out there, you may be interested to know that a 
small set of USDT probes have been added to PostgreSQL 8.2. To find out 
more, check out my blog.

http://blogs.sun.com/robertlor/entry/user_level_dtrace_probes_in

-Robert

On Tue, 29 Aug 2006, Robert Lor wrote:
> For the PostgreSQL users out there, you may be interested to know that a 
> small set of USDT probes have been added to PostgreSQL 8.2. To find out
more,
> check out my blog.
>
> http://blogs.sun.com/robertlor/entry/user_level_dtrace_probes_in
Hi Robert,

This is exciting news, and a welcome addition to the DTrace family! Which 
probes are you looking to add in the future? I would love to use DTrace 
and the postgres provider to calculate the CPU and wall time it took to 
run a query, the time it took for a trigger to execute, or the ability 
to measure the benefits of an index. It might also be useful to export 
some statistics (I use the mib provider periodically to measure network 
avtivity) on the overall operation of the database.

Thanks for the awesome work!
- Ryan
--
UNIX Administrator
http://prefetch.net

Hi Ryan,

Matty wrote:
>
> This is exciting news, and a welcome addition to the DTrace family! 
> Which probes are you looking to add in the future?
The short answer is any useful probes for DBAs and developers.
> I would love to use DTrace and the postgres provider to calculate the 
> CPU and wall time it took to run a query, the time it took for a 
> trigger to execute, or the ability to measure the benefits of an 
> index. It might also be useful to export some statistics (I use the 
> mib provider periodically to measure network avtivity) on the overall 
> operation of the database.
These are great ideas for new probes.

For now, I think the best way to get new probes in is to follow the 
PostgreSQL dev process:

1) If you''re familiar with the code, add the probes yourself and send 
the patch to pgsql-patches at postgresql.org
2) If you''re not familiar with the code or don''t want to hack
it, send
your probe request to pgsql-hackers at postgresql.org. If the developers 
think the request has merit, it''ll go into their TODO list, and any 
developer can work on it.

I plan on keeping track of the list of probes on a wiki/website 
somewhere so the community knows what''s available and what''s
on the TODO
list, etc. Ideas and suggestions are welcome!

I''ll try to add some probes myself, but beware that I''m still
a newbie
to PostgreSQL :-)


-Robert