> What I would like to know. has anybody working databases using
PostgreSQL
> with sizes more than 500 MByte and is happy with it ??? We consider it
> using for research projects starting in autumn, but we would like to
> know, how it behaves with large databases ?
Marten,
We have a 2 Gig database running under Postgres 6.5.1. We've been
using Postgres since version 6.2. It works well and its free. So what
more could you ask. (My mama always said never look a gift mouth in the
horse).
The slow down with inserts is caused by an fsync (write to disk) being
performed after each insert. You can significantly speed this up by
turning off fsync (nohup postmaster -i -o -F > pg.log&). Of course, you
run the risk of losing some inserts if the system crashes. Also, you can
get better performance if you increase the number of shared buffers with
the -B option (i.e. nohup postmaster -i -B 15000 -o -F > pg.log&). The
third speed up is plenty of RAM (crucial for large databases). We have
half a Gig of RAM on a PII/400 MHz running RH 6.0.
-Tony
