David, the VACUUM FULL VERBOSE command might overcome this - I believe it works by effectively doing what you are proposing with a drop database and recreate. It does however lock the tables during the process (not a problem in a dev environ one assumes) but may not be ideal on a live database.
cheers Ben On 30/06/2012, at 4:45 AM, David Johnston wrote: > In my current development environment I often drop some or all of the schemas > in the database and then re-create them schemas and the objects they contain. > When I go to bring up the database in my GUI it takes a considerable amount > of time to initialize. I suspect this is because the catalog tables are > becoming bloated. What is the recommended course of action to de-bloat them? > Running an unqualified vacuum does not seem to help. Is it better to just > periodically drop and recreate the database itself or would a vacuum with > specific tables listed be sufficient – and if so which tables? > > Thanks! > > David J.