Vladimir Ryabtsev <greatvovan(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> I see some recommendations in Internet to do like this (e.g.
> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5170546/how-do-i-delete-a-fixed-number-of-rows-with-sorting-in-postgresql
> ).
> Did it really work in 2011?
No, or at least not any better than today. (For context, "git blame"
says I wrote the comment I just quoted to you in 2005. The feature it
says isn't there wasn't there before that, either.)
> Anyway I think the problem is pretty clear: I want to eventually clear the
> table based on the predicate but I don't want to lock it for a long time.
DELETE doesn't lock the whole table. What problem are you actually
facing?
regards, tom lane