Re: Guideline on use of temporary tables - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Gauthier, Dave
Subject Re: Guideline on use of temporary tables
Date
Msg-id D7FF158337303A419CF4A183F48302D60337997C@hdsmsx411.amr.corp.intel.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Guideline on use of temporary tables  (Richard Huxton <dev@archonet.com>)
Responses Re: Guideline on use of temporary tables
List pgsql-general
Question regarding temp tables....

If I (user=joe) attach and run something that uses a temp table, then I
(user=joe again) attach again in another session, will there be 2
distinct temp tables? Or does one user get one temp table per DB?



-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org
[mailto:pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of Richard Huxton
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 5:32 AM
To: Jimmy Choi
Cc: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Guideline on use of temporary tables

Jimmy Choi wrote:
> I would like to use temporary table as a caching mechanism to speed up
> queries within the same session.

> Is this what temporary table is designed for? Are there caveats that I
> should be aware of? Can you think of other better alternatives?

It's a very common usage of temporary tables. Another is when loading
data that you want to process / split up.

Bear in mind that a temporary table is private to a particular backend,
so if you had 100 connections all using a temporary table for the same
query, that could be 100 copies of the data - not necessarily a
performance improvement.

Also, temporary tables have real entries in the system-tables, so make
sure autovacuum (or your manual vacuums) are scanning pg_class etc often

enough.

--
   Richard Huxton
   Archonet Ltd

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