Re: frustration with database size

>>>>> "AG" == Andrew Gould <andrewgould@yahoo.com> writes:

AG> We purchase data from the state gevernment, change the
AG> data model from flat file to relational, perform
AG> additional analysis and put it all into a PostgreSQL
AG> 7.1.3 database running on FreeBSD 4.4.

In my previous business, we used to do the same thing (buy state data,
make it relational and sell it) with Postgres 6.5.  It kept on
crashing and losing data, so I moved it to MySQL.  That worked
ok... until I bought their isampack utility to compress the data
tables (making them read-only) at which point it worked extremely
well, and took up very little disk space.  If I were to do it today,
I'd definitely be using PG 7.1.3, regardless of disk space usage.

I think if you analyze your field types you might find some wasted
space there.  MySQL tends to convert all CHAR fields to VARCHAR
whenever there is any dynamic sized field in the table.  Perhaps doing
that for PG will help reduce your size.

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Vivek Khera, Ph.D.                Khera Communications, Inc.
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