Re: Data Directory size increasing abnormally

utsav wrote:
> The commanddata field consists of binary data of a txt file whose size
> is between 1kb to 4kb and there is a high frequecy of updates on this
> table (approx twice in a sec)
>
> A strange behaviour is observerd in the physical files with respect to
> this table. The size of the file is growing abnormally in GBs. Suppose
> the file name (/oid of relation /)with respect to the table is
> "18924" I could find entries of 1 GB files like 18924, 18924.1,
> 18924.2 , 18924.3......18924.40 in the data directory, though there
> are on 10k records in the table.
> I have attached the of list command of the data directory.
> Kindly help me in finding , why this is happening because, the server
> is running out of space.
>

are you vacuuming frequently enough? in postgresql, UPDATE behaves
much like DELETE and INSERT, and the DELETE'd old tuples don't get freed
until the tables are vacuumed.

I will note, this app likely would perform 4-10X faster on 8.3 or 8.4
due to significant improvements in how UPDATE functions (and overall
performance improvements).

7.3 is a -really- old release now.