Re: Very large table: Partition it or not?

On Wed, 2020-12-16 at 14:44 -0500, Jack Orenstein wrote:
> What are the pros and cons of partitioning the table?

Pro:

- it bebomes easier to get rid of old data

- autovacuum is more fun with several smaller tables

- a few select queries might become faster

Con:

- administrative overhead (creating and dropping partitions)

- most queries become slightly slower

> Without partitioning, are we liable to run into trouble as this table keeps growing?

That is hard to answer. If it works fine with 5*10^9 rows, it might also
work fine with more data.

The deciding factor might be getting rid of old data. That can be quite
painful with a single large table, but it might be trivial with partitioning.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe
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