Tom wrote: > >I find it really really hard to believe that it's wise to run with >sort_mem exceeding 2 gig ;-). Does that installation have so much >RAM that it can afford to run multiple many-Gb sorts concurrently?
I don't do 2 gig... but I found 0.3 gig helped on a not-too-large system. In a nightly load of a datawarehousing application I have a number of places where I do: set sort_mem=300000; create table new_whatevers as select distinct whatever from import_table; set sort_mem=10000; and set sort_mem=100000; select count(*),b from a group by b; set sort_mem=10000; when the optimizer likes hash aggregates. It significantly (8 hours -> 6 hours) reduces the nightly processing of my log-file analysis database. If my modest system benefited from 1/3 gig, it wouldn't surprise me if a large system benefits from 2 gig. If more info's useful, I'd be happy to provide some. Ron ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send "unregister YourEmailAddressHere" to [EMAIL PROTECTED])