Thanks to all who suggested indexing; I added an index to the running database, and delete performance immediately increased by a factor or 10. The problem now is that when I "vacuum verbose analyze", the pg_largeobject system table takes *forever* (tens of minutes). A new postmaster seems to be spawned. The current psql session seems to disconnect (no more messages), while a "tail -f postmaster.log" shows the vacuum proceeding to the other tables. select version(); PostgreSQL 7.1.2 on hppa2.0-hp-hpux10.20, compiled by GCC 2.95.3 -- P. J. "Josh" Rovero Sonalysts, Inc. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.sonalysts.com 215 Parkway North Work: (860)326-3671 or 442-4355 Waterford CT 06385 *********************************************************************** ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send "unregister YourEmailAddressHere" to [EMAIL PROTECTED])