Re: PostgreSQL performance issues

Rusty Conover wrote:
>
> On Aug 29, 2006, at 7:52 AM, Willo van der Merwe wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> We're running PostgreSQL 8.1.4 on CentOS 4 (Linux version
>> 2.6.9-34.0.1.ELsmp). Hardware specs:
>> 2x AMD Dual-Core Opteron 270 Italy 1Ghz HT 2 x 1MB L2 Cache Socket 940
>> 4 GB Registered ECC PC3200 DDR RAM
>> SuperMicro Server-Class 1U AS1020S series system
>> Dual-channel Ultra320 SCSI controller
>> 1 x 73 GB 10,000rpm Ultra320 SCSI drive with 8MB cache
>> I use it to drive a web application. Everything was working fine when
>> all of a sudden today, things went belly up. Load on the server
>> started increasing and query speeds decreased rapidly. After dropping
>> all the clients I did some quick tests and found the following:
>>
>> I have a log table looking like this:
>> Table "public.log"
>> Column | Type | Modifiers
>> ---------+-----------------------------+---------------------------------
>> site | bigint | not null
>> stamp | timestamp without time zone | default now()
>> type | character(8) | not null default 'log'::bpchar
>> user | text | not null default 'public'::text
>> message | text |
>> Indexes:
>> "fki_log_sites" btree (site)
>> "ix_log_stamp" btree (stamp)
>> "ix_log_type" btree ("type")
>> "ix_log_user" btree ("user")
>> Foreign-key constraints:
>> "log_sites" FOREIGN KEY (site) REFERENCES sites(id) ON UPDATE
>> CASCADE ON DELETE CASCADE
>>
>> and it has 743321 rows and a explain analyze select count(*) from
>> property_values;
>> QUERY
>> PLAN
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Aggregate (cost=55121.95..55121.96 rows=1 width=0) (actual
>> time=4557.797..4557.798 rows=1 loops=1)
>> -> Seq Scan on property_values (cost=0.00..51848.56 rows=1309356
>> width=0) (actual time=0.026..2581.418 rows=1309498 loops=1)
>> Total runtime: 4557.978 ms
>> (3 rows)
>>
>> 4 1/2 seconds for a count(*) ? This seems a bit rough - is there
>> anything else I can try to optimize my Database? You can imagine that
>> slightly more complex queries goes out the roof.
>>
>> Any help appreciated
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Willo van der Merwe
>
>
> Hi,
>
> What about doing a little bit of normalization?
>
> With 700k rows you could probably gain some improvements by:
>
> * normalizing the type and user columns to integer keys (dropping the
> 8 byte overhead for storing the field lengths)
> * maybe change the type column so that its a smallint if there is just
> a small range of possible values (emulating a enum type in other
> databases) rather the joining to another table.
> * maybe move message (if the majority of the rows are big and not null
> but not big enough to be TOASTed, ergo causing only a small number of
> rows to fit onto a 8k page) out of this table into a separate table
> that is joined only when you need the column's content.
>
> Doing these things would fit more rows onto each page, making the scan
> less intensive by not causing the drive to seek as much. Of course
> all of these suggestions depend on your workload.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Rusty
> --
> Rusty Conover
> InfoGears Inc.
>
Hi Rusty,

Good ideas and I've implemented some of them, and gained about 10%. I'm
still sitting on a load avg of about 60.

Any ideas on optimizations on my postgresql.conf, that might have an effect?