> "Mark Woodward" <pgsql@mohawksoft.com> writes:
>> The one thing I notice is that it is REAL slow.
>
> How fast is your disk? Counting on my fingers, I estimate you are
> scanning the table at about 47MB/sec, which might or might not be
> disk-limited...
>
>> I'm using 8.1.4. The "rdate" field looks something like: "2005-09-06"
>
> So why aren't you storing it as type "date"?
>
You are assuming I gave it any thought at all. :-)
I converted it to a date type (create table ratings2 as ....)
markw@snoopy:~/netflix/download$ time psql -c "select count(*) from
ratings" netflix count
-----------100480507
(1 row)
real 1m29.852s
user 0m0.002s
sys 0m0.005s
That's about the right increase based on the reduction in data size.
OK, I guess I am crying wolf, 47M/sec isn't all that bad for the system.