Re: Where to start for performance problem?

On Mon, Nov 24, 2003 at 16:03:17 -0600,
  MK Spam <mk_spam@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> The archives of this list provides many ideas for improving performance, but the problem we are having is gradually
degradingperformance ending in postgres shutting down.  So it's not a matter of optimizing a complex query to take 5
secondsinstead of 60 seconds.  From what I can tell we are using the VACUUM command on a schedule but it doesn't seem
toprevent the database from becoming "congested" as we refer to it.  :]  Anyway, the only way I know to "fix" the
problemis to export (pg_dump) the db, drop the database, recreate the database and import the dump.  This seems to
returnperformance back to normal but obviously isn't a very good "solution".  The slowdown and subsequent crash can
takeas little as 1 week for databases with a lot of data or go as long as a few weeks to a month for smaller data sets. 

A couple of things you might look for are index bloat and having FSM set too
small for your plain vacuums. Upgrading to 7.4 may help with index bloat
if that is your problem.