On Sat, May 04, 2002 at 06:06:38PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> 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.
You're right, I am. But in my quest to operate Pg properly I am
trying to nail down everything that causes its disk usage to
increase. I just had a look at my prod. database and the toast
tables are much larger than their indices, so it is probably
irrelevant.
-jwb