Re: two memory-consuming postgres processes

On May 2, 2008, at 1:40 PM, Scott Marlowe wrote:
> Again, a database protects your data from getting scrambled should the
> program updating it quit halfway through etc...

Right -- but this is a data mining work, I add a derived column to a
row, and it's computed from that very row and a small second table
which should fit in RAM.

> Have you been vacuuming between these update attempts?  Each one has
> created millions of dead rows and bloated your data store.  vacuum
> full / cluster / reindex may be needed.

I've read postgresql.conf better and see autovacuum = on is commented
out, so it's on.  That explains why shutting down was taking so long
to shut autovacuum down too.

Basically, the derived data is not critical at all, -- can I turn (1)
off transactional behavior for an UPDATE, (2) should I care about
vacuuming being done on the fly when saving RAM, or need I defer it/
manage it manually?

I wonder what MySQL would do here on MyISAM tables without
transactional behavior -- perhaps this is the case more suitable for
them?

Cheers,
Alexy