Re: Best way to handle multi-billion row read-only table?

On 2/9/2010 12:47 PM, Asher wrote:
> Hello.
>
> I'm putting together a database to store the readings from various 
> measurement devices for later processing. Since these things (water 
> pressure monitors attached to very large water pipes) take readings at 
> 200Hz and are typically deployed over multiple sites for several 
> months at a time I've got many billions of rows of data, each (at the 
> moment) with the following simple format:
>
>     value REAL NOT NULL,
>     sample_time TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE NOT NULL,
>     channel INTEGER REFERENCES channel(id) NOT NULL
>
> (Where the "channel" table contains metadata to identify the 
> particular sensor, data logger, etc. used to obtain the data and the 
> combination of channel and sample_time is unique.)
>
>

Well first is that 200hz  meaning 200 samples per channel per second.   
That is very fast sampling for pressure sensor,  I would be surprised if 
the meters  are actually giving real results at that rate.  I would look 
at reducing that down to what the meter is actual capable of sending  
What kind of AD card is being used as this effects what makes sense to 
record.

I would look into table partitioning
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/ddl-partitioning.html
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Table_partitioning

A one big index for such a small record will not be a big win because 
the index are going to be the same size as table.
Look into limiting the number of records each index covers.
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/sql-createindex.html

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