pg_attribute growing and growing and growing - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Brian Hirt
Subject pg_attribute growing and growing and growing
Date
Msg-id 20000818010348.B18801@loopy.berkhirt.com
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Responses RE: pg_attribute growing and growing and growing
Re: pg_attribute growing and growing and growing
List pgsql-hackers
Hi,

I'm having a bit of trouble with the pg_attribute table growing larger
and larger and larger.  Actually that's now the real problem, it's 
the indexes that are the real problem.  I run a site that get's a fair
amount of traffic and we use temporary table extensively for some more
complex queries (because by breaking down the queries into steps, we can get 
better performance than by letting postgres plan the query poorly)  I 
assume that creating a temporary table and then dropping it will cause 
the pg_attribute table to grow because our pg_attribute grows by about 15MB 
per day and if it isn't vacuumed nightly the system slows down very 
quickly.  After "vacuum analyze pg_attribute", the pg_attribute table is 
back to it's normal small size.  However, the two indexes on pg_attribute do 
not shrink at all.  The only way I've found to get around this is to 
dump, drop, create, reload the database.  I don't really want to trust 
that to a script and I don't really like having the system down that much.


My questions are:
1) is this problem being worked on?2) are there any better work arounds that what I'm doing?3) if this problem isn't
beingworked on, is it too complex   for a non-experienced postgres coder to tackle?
 
4) if answers to #3 are no & no, any advice on where to start?


System infopsql: 7.0.2PIII 400, Linux 6.2, 512MB memory, etc, etc...

-- 
The world's most ambitious and comprehensive PC game database project.
                     http://www.mobygames.com


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