More activity in pg_stat_activity

Hi, this question is mostly born of curiosity:   when monitoring our
database I often use the following queries to get a current query count
and listing of individual queries:

select count(*)
from pg_stat_activity
where current_query not ilike '<idle>';

select procpid, (now() - query_start) as query_time, client_addr as
client_host, current_query
from pg_stat_activity
where current_query not ilike '<idle>'
    --and procpid=4452
    --and currrent_query ilike '   '
order by (now() - query_start) desc;

Before migrating to 8.2, even during peak times, unless queries were
seriously stacking (not completing in a timely manner), we'd see at most
50 - 100 queries active at any given time (we did have
stats_command_string = on).  Since the migration, during peak times it's
not uncommon to see the query count vary radically between around 80 and
the upper 400s (we have max_connections set to 512).  This variation is
per second and when the count is high, the vast majority listed are
sub-second.  It would seem that this is due to some fine tuning
somewhere on th backside of 8.2 versus previous versions.  Was there
previously a more limited precision to the query lengths that would  be
picked up by the pg_stat_activity view?

--
erik jones <erik@myemma.com>
software development
emma(r)