On Tue, 9 Mar 2004, Mira Kaloper wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I have a postgres database that is VERY slow - in one table we have 50 
> mil records in it.
> I have tried to play with postgres.conf file and shared memory but was 
> not able to speed it up to something that we can work with. We have 
> apple RAID and I am planning to take database to the raid. I was 
> wondering if someone has any hints about improving the speed on postgres.
> 
> Currently we have:
> shmall = 134217728
> shmmax = 134217728
> 
> and in postgresql.conf  I was setting up values to:
> shared_buffers = 15200
> sort_mem = 32168

There are a few areas here.

One, is database tuning:

http://www.varlena.com/varlena/GeneralBits/Tidbits/perf.html

The next is query tuning.  Use explain analyze select <rest of query>... 
to see what is taking the longest, and if any of the estimates for rows 
are way off from actual.  Further, check for things like mismatched FK 
relationships (i.e. a text field fking to an int field).   Lastly, make 
sure you're analyzing your data, and that you've vacuumed the database 
lately.  You may need a vacuum full if you've waited a long time since the 
last vacuum.

The next issue is your hardware.  There has been another report here on 
OSX performing pretty poorly, especially disappointing were the results 
with apple's XRAID product, which was running about 2/3 as fast as was 
advertised.

You might want to post the output of explain analyze of one of the slow 
queries.  The best list for this stuff is pgsql-perform..


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TIP 8: explain analyze is your friend

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