Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
>> that a pure ANALYZE command needs only a read lock on the target table,
>> not an exclusive lock as VACUUM needs, so it's much more friendly to
>> concurrent transactions.
> 7.1 already does the ANALYZE part of VACUUM ANALYZE with lighter
> locking.
Right, but you still have to run through the VACUUM part, which will
hold down an exclusive lock for a considerable amount of time (if the
table is big).
regards, tom lane