* Patrick K. O'Brien wrote on [2007-09-13 12:45:24 -0500]:
> What I'd be curious to know is how quickly does
> ShelfStorage startup time degrade in between packings?  I'm hoping that the
> benefits of ShelfStorage don't degrade too quickly (like, startup time
> increasing dramatically after only a few transactions without a pack).
> Does anyone have any insight into this?

Ok, I'll bite -- herein are the results of growing a ShelfStorage
that has been packed but no other new object activity as yet --
adding new objects in batches of 5,000 to my collection of 500,000
"NewsItem" objects:

            Commit New      Startup     Diff
                          (get root)
Baseline    n/a             0.001      0.000
5,000       5.394           0.185      0.184
5,000       5.540           0.364      0.179
5,000       5.813           0.556      0.192
5,000       5.924           0.736      0.180
5,000       6.080           0.918      0.182

Pretty linear.

I then did a pack; comparing it to the original bulk load and pack:
                    Seconds     RAM Consumed (peak)
Initial 500,000     247         74MB
Subsequent 25,000   332         10MB

Adding another few sets of 5,000 records and re-running the timing
tests produced results very much in line with those listed in the
first table.