Jeffrey Baker <jwbaker@acm.org> writes:
> On Fri, May 03, 2002 at 03:47:54PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
>> AFAIK there's not a big problem with index growth if the range of index
>> keys remains reasonably static. The problem comes in if you have a
>> range of values that keeps growing (eg, you are indexing a SERIAL or
>> timestamp column). The right end of the btree keeps growing, but
>> there's no mechanism to collapse out no-longer-used space at the left
>> end.
> Wouldn't that explain the complaints I have about my toast tables
> always growing?
It'd explain the indexes growing --- the index key is an OID, which will
keep increasing as you store new toasted values. I thought you'd been
complaining about the tables themselves, though.
regards, tom lane