On Tue, Aug 30, 2005 at 05:29:17PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote: > Markus Benne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > We have a highly active table that has virtually all > > entries updated every 5 minutes. Typical size of the > > table is 50,000 entries, and entries have grown fat. > ... > > We are thinking of splitting the table in two: the > > part the updates often, and the part the updates > > infrequently as we suspect that record size impacts > > vacuum. > You just said that virtually all rows update constantly --- where's > the "infrequent" part?
I think he means splitting it vertically, instead of horizontally, and it sounds like an excellent idea, if a large enough portion of each record is in fact mostly fixed. Otherwise, PostgreSQL is copying data multiple times, only to have the data expire as part of a dead row. I've already started to notice such issues with postgresql - but more because I'm using low-end hardware, and I'm projecting the effect for when our database becomes much larger with much higher demand on the database. This is the sort of scenario where a database without transactional integrity would significantly out-perform one designed around it. If records are fixed sized, and updated in place, these problems would occur far less often. Is it heresy to suggest MySQL in here? :-) I switched from MySQL to PostgreSQL several months ago, and haven't looked back - but they do work differently, and for certain uses, one can destroy the other. Using a MyISAM table would be the way I would go with this sort of problem. Cheers, mark -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________ . . _ ._ . . .__ . . ._. .__ . . . .__ | Neighbourhood Coder |\/| |_| |_| |/ |_ |\/| | |_ | |/ |_ | | | | | | \ | \ |__ . | | .|. |__ |__ | \ |__ | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them... http://mark.mielke.cc/ ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq