Re: Strategy for doing number-crunching

Matthew Foster <matthew.foster@noaa.gov> writes:
> We have a database with approximately 130M rows, and we need to produce
> statistics (e.g. mean, standard deviation, etc.) on the data.  Right now,
> we're generating these stats via a single SELECT, and it is extremely
> slow...like it can take hours to return results.

What datatype are the columns being averaged?  If "numeric", consider
casting to float8 before applying the aggregates.  You'll lose some
precision but it'll likely be orders of magnitude faster.

                       regards, tom lane