Re: optimization ideas for frequent, large(ish) updates

> 800MB is correct, yes... There are usually only 10-30 postgres processes 
>  active (imagine 5-10 people working on the web front-end while cron 
> jobs access the db occasionally). Very few queries can use such large 
> amounts of memory for sorting, but they do exist.

But remember that means that if you have 4 people doign 2 sorts each at 
the same time, postgres will use 6.4GB RAM maximum.  The sort_mem 
parameter means that if a sort is larger than the max, it will be done 
in disk swap.

Chris