<wespvp(at)syntegra(dot)com> writes:
> Is this hang on COMMIT when using WITH HOLD to be expected?
Yes. WITH HOLD is not magic, it just makes a materialized copy of the
SELECT result. If you're talking about a multi-million-row result,
it's gonna take awhile.
> The kludge solution I implemented was to write out all the data I
> needed from table A to a file, then read that file and update table B.
In theory at least, that should not be any faster than a WITH HOLD
cursor, since you're effectively replicating the same functionality
outside the database ...
regards, tom lane