Overview space needs?

[The Hermit Hacker]

On Mon, 23 Aug 1999, Paul Theodoropoulos wrote:

> 
> >
> > > >Hmm, I'm seeing 2.6Gb (and growing) for 1.6M articles.
> > >
> > > isn't that a function of retention/expiration policies? e.g. if 1.6M
> > > articles constitutes a months worth of retained articles on server X, 
> > it'll
> > > require more overview data than if 1.6M articles constitute one weeks 
> > worth
> > > of retained articles?
> >
> >You lost me on the logic of this one...why would 1.6M articles that are
> >one month old require more disk space for overview then that same 1.6M
> >articles that are only 1 week old?
> 
> the longer the article's been around, the more likely it will be referenced 
> by other articles, therefore a larger volume of overview data would 
> accumulate for that given article.
> 
> 1.6 million articles that have lingered on a newsserver for six weeks would 
> accumulate more references than 1.6 articles that have been on the 
> newsserver for six days.

Sorry for being slow/dense here, but an overview record only lasts so long
as the article itself lasts, no?  Whether that be 1 day or 6 weeks...no?
I guess where I'm a little lost is in what good the overview record is if
the article itself no longer exists?  

Marc G. Fournier                   ICQ#7615664               IRC Nick: Scrappy
Systems Administrator @ hub.org 
primary: scrappy at hub.org           secondary: scrappy@{freebsd|postgresql}.org