Re: Temp files for simple queries

Hello Julien,

On 22/06/2021 13.55, Julien Rouhaud wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 22, 2021 at 01:51:55PM +0200, Radoulov, Dimitre wrote:
>> Just to clarify: the size of the temp file is 7MB and with work_mem of 4MB
>> it clearly doesn't fit.
>>
>> But why an "order by" of a 440kB of data would require 7MB.
>>
>> One possible reason is that that the number of records in that table varies
>> significantly during the day,
> That would be the logical explanation.  You could configure auto_explain to
> make sure of that (https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/auto-explain.html).
>
>> but - if that's the case - I would expect that
>> the table would be much bigger than 440kB (size taken using \dt+).
> Not necessarily.  autovacuum can truncate the file if all the trailing blocks
> are empty (and if it can acquire an exclusive lock fast enough), so if some
> client inserts a lot of rows, process them and remove them all, and later on
> slowly start to insert new rows you will get that behavior.

I thought that only a vacuum full could do that, thanks for pointing it out.


Best regards
Dimitre