Re: RAM-only temporary tables

Kevin Grittner wrote:
> An idea for a possible enhancement to PostgreSQL: allow creation of a
> temporary table without generating any disk I/O. (Creating and
> dropping a three-column temporary table within a database transaction
> currently generates about 150 disk writes).
>
> If some circumstances don't make it feasible to always do this as a
> RAM-only operation, perhaps a clause could be added to the CREATE
> TEMPORARY TABLE syntax to specify this behavior along with whatever
> limitations on the temporary table are required for this to work.
> (For example, maybe this is only feasible if the table will be dropped
> by the end of the transaction?)

As someone else already pointed out you can put temp tables on a RAM
disk, but the larger issue is that temp tables still cause system table
churn which will always need to be on stable media.