Robert Haas <robertmh...@gmail.com> writes: > On Wed, May 2, 2012 at 12:26 PM, Alvaro Herrera > <alvhe...@commandprompt.com> wrote: >> Hm. I see those two things as different -- to me, bloat is unremoved >> dead tuples, whereas slack space would be free space that can be reused >> by new tuples. Slack space is useful as it avoids relation extension; >> bloat is not.
> I guess I think of bloat as including both unremoved dead tuples and > unwanted internal free space. If you create a giant table, delete 9 > out of every 10 tuples, and vacuum, the table is still "bloated", IMV. The difficulty is to tell the difference between useless free space and useful free space. If there's a reasonable probability of putting new data into a given chunk of free space in the near future, it's not bloat. regards, tom lane -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers