[SQL] deleting records from a table

2007-01-12 Thread Mario Behring
Hi all,

Simple question: once I execute the delete statement, does it free disk space 
immediatelly? Does Postgres uses something like a datafile with a pre-defined 
size like Oracle does??

Please advise.

Thank you.

Mario




 

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Re: [SQL] deleting records from a table

2007-01-12 Thread Richard Broersma Jr

---> Simple question: once I execute the delete statement, does it free disk 
space immediatelly?
No.  deleted rows (in a sense) are simply marked as deleted and are made 
avaliable for being
written over by a new or updated tuple.  If you want to recover the space you 
can you TRUNCATE or
VACUUM FULL & possible REINDEX.

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Richard Broersma Jr.

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Re: [SQL] deleting records from a table

2007-01-12 Thread Richard Broersma Jr
> Thank you for your help.
> 
> I am already running the vacuumdb full.after it finishes (I guess 
> it will take a
> while to finish...) how should I execute this REINDEX ? Is there a single 
> command to reindex the
> entire database?

Here is a link that describes its use:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.2/interactive/app-reindexdb.html

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Richard Broersma Jr.

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Re: [SQL] deleting records from a table

2007-01-12 Thread Scott Marlowe
On Fri, 2007-01-12 at 11:45, Mario Behring wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Simple question: once I execute the delete statement, does it free
> disk space immediatelly? Does Postgres uses something like a datafile
> with a pre-defined size like Oracle does??
> 
Take a look here:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.2/static/routine-vacuuming.html
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.2/static/mvcc-intro.html

That should explain the basics of mvcc and vacuuming as applies to
pgsql.

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Re: [SQL] deleting records from a table

2007-01-12 Thread Andrew Sullivan
On Fri, Jan 12, 2007 at 09:45:28AM -0800, Mario Behring wrote:
> Simple question: once I execute the delete statement, does it free
> disk space immediatelly? Does Postgres uses something like a
> datafile with a pre-defined size like Oracle does??

What others said; but note that a vacuumed table that has a number of
now-empty slots can actually be a performance advantage, because new
rows don't need to increase the size of the table's on-disk file (so
you incur slightly less I/O).  There's a "sweet spot" for this that
you can discover by testing.

A

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