"Gary Doades" <gpd(at)gpdnet(dot)co(dot)uk> writes:
> I think the reason I wasn't seeing performance issues with normal sort
> operations is because they use work_mem not maintenance_work_mem which was
> only set to 2048 anyway. Does that sound right?
Very probable. Do you want to test the theory by jacking that up? ;-)
regards, tom lane