Marti Raudsepp, 21.03.2012 12:35:
> E.g. VACUUM/ANALYZE needed to be ran manually and it used to take an
> *exclusive* lock on tables, for longish periods, preventing any
> queries! Failure to vacuum would cause the files to bloat without
> limit and slow down your queries gradually. In the worst case, you hit
> XID wraparound and the database would shut down entirely.
>
> Even still in 8.3 (which was newest until 2009) with autovacuum, if
> you got max_fsm_pages tuned wrong, vacuum would basically stop
> functioning and your tables would bloat.
I still see the vacuum part as one of the major deficiencies of PostgreSQL (that and the very limited partitioning
features).
I know that all DBMS (that use MVCC) do it in some way or the other, but I know of no other where it is such a
"prominent"maintenance task.
Thomas