Sample Exam Questions

From the objective of OSS-DB Exam Gold
- Performance Tuning - Tuning database and queries

Sample Question

3.09

Choose two statements that are NOT accurate regarding the case where the full_page_writes parameter is set to OFF.

  1. Response performance during data update may improve.

  2. It may reduce the amount of WAL written during data updates.

  3. Response performance does not change if the wal_level parameter is set to "minimal".

  4. Unrecoverable data corruption may occur in the event of system crash.

  5. Point-in-time recovery operations will become impossible.

※This sample exam is different from those that appear in the actual OSS-DB Exam.
2025/06/02

Answer and Explanation

[Options A and B]
When full_page_writes is ON, the entire content of each data page is written to the WAL during the first modification to that page after a checkpoint. When OFF, only the changes are written to the WAL, potentially improving response performance and reducing WAL write volume.

[Option C]
Even when the wal_level parameter is set to minimal, the behavior is the same as described above.

[Option D]
When full_page_writes is OFF, a system crash during a partial page write can lead to unrecoverable data corruption.

[Option E]
Even with full_page_writes set to OFF, you can still obtain base backups and WAL segments that can be used for point-in-time recovery.
However, since full_page_writes=on is temporarily in effect from the execution of pg_start_backup until pg_stop_backup is executed, care must be taken to avoid degradation in response performance when updating data.

Therefore, inaccurate statements are C and E.

Refer to the official documentation for details.
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/10/runtime-config-wal.html#GUC-FULL-PAGE-WRITES