Bruce Momjian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Agreed. What I am wondering is with our system where every update gets > a new row, how would this help us? I know we try to keep an update on > the same row as the original, but is there any significant performance > benefit to doing that which would offset the compaction advantage?
Because Oracle uses overwrite-in-place (undoing from an UNDO log on transaction abort), while we always write a whole new row, it would take much larger PCTFREE wastage to get a useful benefit in PG than it does in Oracle. That wastage translates directly into increased I/O costs, so I'm a bit dubious that we should assume there is a win to be had here just because Oracle offers the feature. regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 9: the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match