Re: Database size Vs performance degradation

Dave North wrote:
> Thank you for the suggestion..much appreciated. Alas, I don't think
> this will be possible without a change to the application but it's a
> good idea nonetheless.

I assume you mean the "create table as select ..." suggestion (don't forget to include a little quoted material so we'll know what you are replying to :-)

You don't have to change the application. One of the great advantages of Postgres is that even table creation, dropping and renaming are transactional. So you can do the select / drop / rename as a transaction by an external app, and your main application will be none the wiser. In pseudo-SQL:

begin
create table new_table as (select * from old_table);
create index ... on new_table ... (as needed)
drop table old_table
alter table new_table rename to old_table
commit

You should be able to just execute this by hand on a running system, and see if some of your bloat goes away.

Craig