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F.30. pgstattuple

The pgstattuple module provides various functions to obtain tuple-level statistics.

F.30.1. Functions

pgstattuple(text) returns record

pgstattuple returns a relation's physical length, percentage of "dead" tuples, and other info. This may help users to determine whether vacuum is necessary or not. The argument is the target relation's name (optionally schema-qualified). For example:

test=> SELECT * FROM pgstattuple('pg_catalog.pg_proc');
-[ RECORD 1 ]------+-------
table_len          | 458752
tuple_count        | 1470
tuple_len          | 438896
tuple_percent      | 95.67
dead_tuple_count   | 11
dead_tuple_len     | 3157
dead_tuple_percent | 0.69
free_space         | 8932
free_percent       | 1.95

The output columns are described in Table F-21.

Table F-21. pgstattuple output columns

Column Type Description
table_len bigint Physical relation length in bytes
tuple_count bigint Number of live tuples
tuple_len bigint Total length of live tuples in bytes
tuple_percent float8 Percentage of live tuples
dead_tuple_count bigint Number of dead tuples
dead_tuple_len bigint Total length of dead tuples in bytes
dead_tuple_percent float8 Percentage of dead tuples
free_space bigint Total free space in bytes
free_percent float8 Percentage of free space

pgstattuple acquires only a read lock on the relation. So the results do not reflect an instantaneous snapshot; concurrent updates will affect them.

pgstattuple judges a tuple is "dead" if HeapTupleSatisfiesNow returns false.

pgstattuple(oid) returns record

This is the same as pgstattuple(text), except that the target relation is specified by OID.

pgstatindex(text) returns record

pgstatindex returns a record showing information about a B-tree index. For example:

test=> SELECT * FROM pgstatindex('pg_cast_oid_index');
-[ RECORD 1 ]------+------
version            | 2
tree_level         | 0
index_size         | 8192
root_block_no      | 1
internal_pages     | 0
leaf_pages         | 1
empty_pages        | 0
deleted_pages      | 0
avg_leaf_density   | 50.27
leaf_fragmentation | 0

The output columns are:

Column Type Description
version integer B-tree version number
tree_level integer Tree level of the root page
index_size bigint Total number of pages in index
root_block_no bigint Location of root block
internal_pages bigint Number of "internal" (upper-level) pages
leaf_pages bigint Number of leaf pages
empty_pages bigint Number of empty pages
deleted_pages bigint Number of deleted pages
avg_leaf_density float8 Average density of leaf pages
leaf_fragmentation float8 Leaf page fragmentation

As with pgstattuple, the results are accumulated page-by-page, and should not be expected to represent an instantaneous snapshot of the whole index.

pg_relpages(text) returns bigint

pg_relpages returns the number of pages in the relation.

F.30.2. Authors

Tatsuo Ishii and Satoshi Nagayasu