-->
<para>
- Allow inserts, not only updates and deletes, to
- trigger <link linkend="autovacuum">autovacuum</link> activity
+ Allow inserts, not only updates and deletes, to trigger vacuuming
+ activity in <link linkend="autovacuum">autovacuum</link>
(Laurenz Albe, Darafei Praliaskouski)
</para>
<para>
- This new behavior reduces the work that will be necessary later
- when the table needs to be frozen, and it allows pages to be
- marked as all-visible sooner. All-visible pages allow index-only
- scans to access fewer heap rows.
+ Previously, insert-only activity would trigger auto-analyze but
+ not auto-vacuum, on the grounds that there could not be any dead
+ tuples to remove. However, a vacuum scan has other useful
+ side-effects such as setting page-all-visible bits, which improves
+ the efficiency of index-only scans. Also, allowing an insert-only
+ table to receive periodic vacuuming helps to spread out the work
+ of <quote>freezing</quote> old tuples, so that there is not
+ suddenly a large amount of freezing work to do when the entire
+ table reaches the anti-wraparound threshold all at once.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ If necessary, this behavior can be adjusted with the new
+ parameters <xref linkend="guc-autovacuum-vacuum-insert-threshold"/>
+ and <xref linkend="guc-autovacuum-vacuum-insert-scale-factor"/>, or
+ the equivalent table storage options.
</para>
</listitem>
-->
<para>
- Add <xref linkend="guc-maintenance-io-concurrency"/> to control I/O
- concurrency for maintenance operations (Thomas Munro)
+ Add <xref linkend="guc-maintenance-io-concurrency"/> parameter to
+ control I/O concurrency for maintenance operations (Thomas Munro)
</para>
</listitem>