Re: [HACKERS] Brain-Dead Sort Algorithm??

> Sigh. Y'all like the sweeping statement, which got you in a bit of
> trouble the first time too :)
>
> Without knowing your schema, I can't say why you have *exactly* the
> storage requirement you see. But, you have chosen the absolute worst
> case for *any* relational database: a schema with only a single, very
> small column.
>
> For Postgres (and other DBs, but the details will vary) there is a 36
> byte overhead per row to manage the tuple and the transaction
> behavior. So if you stored your data as int8 (int4 is too small for 10
> digits, right?) I see an average usage of slightly over 44 bytes per
> row (36+8). So, for 6.8 million rows, you will require 300MB. I'm
> guessing that you are using char(10) fields, which gives 50 bytes/row
> or a total of 340MB, which matches your number to two digits.
>
> Note that the tuple header size will stay the same (with possibly some
> modest occasional bumps) for rows with more columns, so the overhead
> decreases as you increase the number of columns in your tables.
>
> By the way, I was going to say to RTFM, but I see a big blank spot on
> this topic (I could have sworn that some of the info posted to the
> mailing lists on this topic had made it into the manual, but maybe
> not).

This is an FAQ item.

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