On Sun, Mar 11, 2018 at 9:49 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Andrew Dunstan <andrew.dunstan@2ndquadrant.com> writes:
>> Why does VACUUM FULL cause the size of this table with a single
>> dropped column (1 out of 1000) cause the table size to double?
>
> VACUUM FULL will rewrite the tuples with a null bitmap where they
> had none before (cf reform_and_rewrite_tuple). That's only a rather
> marginal increase in the tuple size, but in this particular example,
> it pushes the tuples from just under half a page to just over, so
> that you go from 2 tuples/page to 1.
>
Aha! Thanks for the explanation.
cheers
andrew
--
Andrew Dunstan https://www.2ndQuadrant.com
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services