Re: Running out of disk space during query

Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> writes:
> I suppose I could put quotas in place or something but I don't really
> have a problem with the database as a whole using up a bunch of disk
> space (hence why it's got alot of room to grow into), I just would have
> liked a "this will chew up more disk space than you have and then fail"
> message instead of what ended up happening for this query.

I've got the same problem with this that I do with the recently-proposed
patch to fail queries with estimated cost > X --- to wit, I think it
will result in a net *reduction* in system reliability not an improvement.
Any such feature changes the planner estimates from mere heuristics into
a gating factor that will make queries fail entirely.  And they are
really not good enough to put that kind of trust into.
        regards, tom lane