deleting rows with foreign keys - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Tom Allison
Subject deleting rows with foreign keys
Date
Msg-id F2CDAA95-A879-4E2B-8C34-41982151F340@tacocat.net
Whole thread Raw
Responses Re: deleting rows with foreign keys  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
List pgsql-general
Here's my table:

                                         Table "public.tokens"
   Column   |            Type             |
Modifiers
-----------+-----------------------------
+------------------------------------------------------------
token_idx | bigint                      | not null default nextval
('tokens_token_idx_seq'::regclass)
token     | character varying(140)      | not null
last_seen | timestamp without time zone | default now()
Indexes:
     "tokens_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (token_idx)
     "tokens_token_key" UNIQUE, btree (token)


I have ~250K rows in this table.
the token_idx is referenced in two other tables, both of whom have a
foreign key constraint to ON DELETE CASCADE.
Of the other two tables, one has ~1M rows and the other ~350K rows.
So they are both one to many relationships with many of the token
table rows appearing in the other two.

Problem:
Deleting one row can take 2 seconds.

Is there something I can do to improve the speed.  Locking the tables
is an option as this is a maintenance procedure and not regular
business.  But I don't know that this will be useful or practical.

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