Re: selects from large tables

Nikk Anderson kirjutas K, 20.11.2002 kell 20:08:
> Hi,
>
> I tried a test cluster on a copy of our real data - all 10 million
> rows or so.  WOW!   The normal select performance improved
> drastically.
>
> Selecting 3 months worth of data was taking 146 seconds to retrieve.
> After clustering it took 7.7 seconds!  We are now looking into ways we
> can automate clustering to keep the table up to date.  The cluster
> itself took around 2.5 hours.
>
> As our backend systems are writing hundreds of rows of data in per
> minute into the table that needs clustering - will cluster handle
> locking the tables when dropping the old, and renaming the clustered
> data?  What happens to the data being added to the table while cluster
> is running? Our backend systems may have some problems if the table
> does not exist when it tries to insert, and we don't want to lose any
> data.

You could use a staging table that takes all the inserts and the
contents of which are moved (begin;insert into big select from
small;delete from small;commit;vacuum full small;) to the main table
once a day (or week or month) just before clustering the big one.

Then do all your selects from a UNION view on both - thus you have a big
fast clustered table and non-clustered "live" table which stays small.
That should make your selects fast(er).

-----------------
Hannu