Re: ever growing pkey files

matthew(dot)copeland(at)honeywell(dot)com writes:
> I have a database that has two tables. One of the tables gets changed
> very often. (like every 5 minutes). The values that where in the table
> are replaced with a new set of values with new unique keys. Now, I vacuum
> these tables fairly often, but the pkey files for these tables never seem
> to get smaller. They just keep growing. What do I have to do to make the
> pkey files flush there extra blocks?

Yeah, VACUUM doesn't shrink indexes presently (it's on the TODO
list...).

> PostgreSQL version 7.0.3 running under Linux.

You could try REINDEX to rebuild the indexes, but I'd recommend updating
to 7.1.2 (or soon, 7.1.3) first. I don't recall whether REINDEX is
available/trustworthy in 7.0.

A grottier solution is to DROP and re-CREATE the indexes.

regards, tom lane