The release notes for 8.1, http://www.postgresql.org/docs/whatsnew, states
about GIST
>>indexing mechanism has improved to support the high-speed concurrency,
>>recoverability and update performance
As I write this I am creating an index with gist and trying to do a select
on the table froze. Using Postgresql 8.1.3
The documents for GIST seem to imply that by 8.1 the lock issue would be
resolved,
http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/oddmuse/index.cgi/GiST_Concurrency_Recovery.
Is the locing an issue mostly at index creation time?