Thank you: the problem was the effective_cache_size (which I hadn't
changed from the default of 1000). This machine doesn't have loads of
RAM, but I knocked it up to 65536 and now the query uses the index,
without having to change the statistics.
Considering recent discussion about how 8.2 is probably noticeably more
sensitive to effective_cache_size than prior releases, I wonder whether
it's not time to adopt a larger default value for that setting. The
current default of 1000 pages (8Mb) seems really pretty silly for modern
machines; we could certainly set it to 10 times that without problems,
and maybe much more. Thoughts?
I think that 128 megs is probably a reasonable starting point. I know
plenty of people that run postgresql on 512 megs of ram. If you take
into account shared buffers and work mem, that seems like a reasonable
starting point.
Joshua D. Drake
regards, tom lane
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate
subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your
message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
--
=== The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 || 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
Providing the most comprehensive PostgreSQL solutions since 1997
http://www.commandprompt.com/
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate
subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your
message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
