> > In summary, I suspect that it is better from a UI perspective to
> > bring down the app on Sat at 3 a.m and reimport with a fixed time
> > period than to live through reindexing/vacuuming which may deadlock.
> > Am I missing something?
>
> Consider running pg_autovacuum, and thereby do a little bit of
> vacuuming here and there all the time. It DOESN'T block, so unless
> your system is really busy, it shouldn't slow things down to a major
> degree.
My real world experience on a *very* heavily updated OLTP type DB, following
advice from this list (thanks guys!), is that there is essentially zero cost
to going ahead and vacuuming as often as you feel like it. Go crazy, and
speed up your DB!
OK, that's on a quad CPU box with goodish IO, so maybe there are issues on
very slow boxen, but in a heavy-update environment the advantages seem to
easily wipe out the costs.
Matt
p.s. Sorry to sound like a "Shake'n'Vac" advert.
