Re: PostgreSQL Process memory architecture - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Stephen Frost
Subject Re: PostgreSQL Process memory architecture
Date
Msg-id 20130527121609.GF8597@tamriel.snowman.net
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: PostgreSQL Process memory architecture  (Atri Sharma <atri.jiit@gmail.com>)
Responses Re: PostgreSQL Process memory architecture
Re: PostgreSQL Process memory architecture
List pgsql-hackers
* Atri Sharma (atri.jiit@gmail.com) wrote:
> On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 3:41 PM, Ben Zeev, Lior <lior.ben-zeev@hp.com> wrote:
> > Do you have idea what may be the reason that PostgreSQL process consume more memory when there are more partial
indexeson the DB table?
 

It might use a bit more, but it shouldn't be excessive..  What, exactly,
are you seeing and would it be possible for you to provide a repeatable
test case with a small-ish set of data?

> Well, I am not too sure, but indexes always take up more space, so if
> your backend has a lot of indexes, it will cause the process to
> consume more memory.

Indexes require additional disk space, certainly.  Having a lot of
indexes, by itself, shouldn't seriously increase memory usage.

> Indexes should be used with care, as too many indexes can cause a
> memory overhead,which can cause performance degradations.

This is not generally a reason to avoid indexes.  Indexes require more
disk space and must be kept up to date, making them expensive to
maintain due to increased disk i/o.  Building an index uses as much
memory as it's allowed to- it uses maintenance_work_mem to limit itself.
Thanks,
    Stephen

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