Determining dead/unused space in a table?

From: David Spadea <david(dot)spadea(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Determining dead/unused space in a table?
Date: 2009-10-18 11:11:21
Message-ID: 4ae0cb070910180411j49488d53h2f7044fdbe078102@mail.gmail.com
Views: Raw Message | Whole Thread | Download mbox | Resend email
Thread:
Lists: pgsql-general

Hi all,

I'm looking to do some reporting on tablespace usage, and wanted to be able
to determine how much of the space a table physically occupies is actually
in use.

1. I know I can get n_live_tup and n_dead_tup from pg_stat_all_tables, but I
don't think that really answers the question entirely. After a vacuum, my
understanding is that the n_dead_tup will go to zero, but the physical table
size will not have decreased. The pages simply remain available for future
use. How do I determine the amount of space which is not occupied by
live/dead tuples?

2. Is there a way to calculate the amount of space occupied by dead tuples,
or even to calculate the space used by live tuples so I can subtract it from
pg_relation_size()? I don't think it's valid to multiply n_dead_tup by page
size, as multiple tuples could be on a given page.

Thanks for your help!
Dave

Responses

Browse pgsql-general by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message Tom Lane 2009-10-18 15:53:17 Re: Determining dead/unused space in a table?
Previous Message Thom Brown 2009-10-18 10:46:06 Re: How ad an increasing index to a query result?