Re: [HACKERS] PostgreSQL v7.2b2 Released

> What does VACUUM do if it doesn´t shrink the size of the database?
>

I was wondering the same thing, so I looked at the development docs and it
appears that regular VACUUM frees the dead tuples so that the space on a page
may be reused. This approach doesn't actually reduce the number of pages
allocated though, it reduces the chances that more pages will be allocated
(because the pages have free space to make tuples in). VACUUM FULL packs all
the tuples together and actually reduces the number of allocated pages. You
should be able to run a DB 24x7 by issuing only VACUUM without the disk usage
growing out of control.

Jeff Davis

> Saludos... :-)