Greg Stark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > And a 5% sample is a pretty big. In fact my tests earlier showed the i/o from > 5% block sampling took just as long as reading all the blocks. Even if we > figure out what's causing that (IMHO surprising) result and improve matters I > would only expect it to be 3-4x faster than a full scan.
One way to reduce the I/O pain from extensive sampling would be to turn VACUUM ANALYZE into a genuine combined operation instead of a mere notational shorthand for two separate scans. I'd still be worried about the CPU pain though. ANALYZE can afford to expend a pretty fair number of cycles per sampled tuple, but with a whole-table sample that's going to add up. regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings