Re: Why Size Of Data Backed Up Varies Significantly In SQL 6.5? - Mailing list pgsql-general

From jdassen@cistron.nl (J.H.M. Dassen (Ray))
Subject Re: Why Size Of Data Backed Up Varies Significantly In SQL 6.5?
Date
Msg-id slrn9egfri.oc2.jdassen@odin.cistron-office.nl
Whole thread Raw
In response to Why Size Of Data Backed Up Varies Significantly In SQL 6.5?  ("Wendy" <windy1a@yahoo.com>)
Responses Re: Re: Why Size Of Data Backed Up Varies Significantly In SQL 6.5?
List pgsql-general
Wendy <windy1a@yahoo.com> wrote:
>I backed up a database at night and noted the size to be about over 300MB.
>The following morning, I again backed up the same database and found out
>the size to be less than 100MB. There was no massive deletes by users
>during that morning.
>What would account to that vast difference in size?

An automatically executed script (e.g. cron job) that ran a VACUUM on the
database during the night.

>I'm really worried about this database because I don't understand what is
>happening here.

Deleted table entries still occupy disk space; VACUUMing cleans them out,
thereby shrinking the database's disk space usage.

HTH,
Ray
--
"Perhaps they spent some of the time writing the patent application. That
task was surely harder than thinking of the technique."
    RMS on Amazon's 1-Click(R) patent,
    http://linuxtoday.com/story.php3?sn=13652

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