pg_attribute growing and growing and growing

From: Brian Hirt <bhirt(at)mobygames(dot)com>
To: pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org
Cc: Brian Hirt <bhirt(at)loopy(dot)berkhirt(dot)com>
Subject: pg_attribute growing and growing and growing
Date: 2000-08-18 06:03:48
Message-ID: 20000818010348.B18801@loopy.berkhirt.com
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Hi,

I'm having a bit of trouble with the pg_attribute table growing larger
and larger and larger. Actually that's now the real problem, it's
the indexes that are the real problem. I run a site that get's a fair
amount of traffic and we use temporary table extensively for some more
complex queries (because by breaking down the queries into steps, we can get
better performance than by letting postgres plan the query poorly) I
assume that creating a temporary table and then dropping it will cause
the pg_attribute table to grow because our pg_attribute grows by about 15MB
per day and if it isn't vacuumed nightly the system slows down very
quickly. After "vacuum analyze pg_attribute", the pg_attribute table is
back to it's normal small size. However, the two indexes on pg_attribute do
not shrink at all. The only way I've found to get around this is to
dump, drop, create, reload the database. I don't really want to trust
that to a script and I don't really like having the system down that much.

My questions are:

1) is this problem being worked on?
2) are there any better work arounds that what I'm doing?
3) if this problem isn't being worked on, is it too complex
for a non-experienced postgres coder to tackle?

4) if answers to #3 are no & no, any advice on where to start?

System info
psql: 7.0.2
PIII 400, Linux 6.2, 512MB memory, etc, etc...

--
The world's most ambitious and comprehensive PC game database project.

http://www.mobygames.com

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