Re: Unanswered questions about Postgre

[re: question #4, speed/vacuuming]

> Do
> people need to vaccume their databases hourly? Can you vaccume while
> a database is in use? Any discussion on this curious phenomenon would
> be appreciated. It still boggles me.

I vacuum twice a day, once in the dead of night, once around
lunch. Yes, you can vacuum while the db is in use, but many locks
(for updates, inserts, etc.) will hold up the vacuum.

> 5) BLOB Support.

Keep in mind the pgsql 7.1 (about to go beta tomorrow, if I heard
right) will support much longer row sizes than 8k. Doesn't remove
the needs for blobs for many of us, but fixed my problems.

I believe the docs discussing the c-level interfaces talk about lo
creation and such. Have you looked in the low-level docs in the
programmer/developer manuals?

I have only played w/blobs; others can speak better about their
use/limitations, but if I have it correct:
. blobs cannot be dumped
. blobs are not normally vacuumed

So, for most of us, I think the TOAST feature of 7.1 that allows >8k
row sizes is much nicer. (Unless, of course, you really want to store
binary data, not just long text fields.)

Good luck,

--
Joel Burton, Director of Information Systems -*- jburton(at)scw(dot)org
Support Center of Washington (www.scw.org)