Re: sort_mem param of postgresql.conf

Be advised that the work_mem setting (and its deprecated alias sort_mem) are on a per-client basis.  So if you have a bunch of people running reports with that setting, you might discover your server running out of memory; that's a really high setting.  Generally, if it's only a report or two that need a lot more working memory for sorts, you can do this at the beginning of them instead:

set work_mem='512MB';