Simon, Tom: While it's not possible to get accurate estimates from a fixed size sample, I think it would be possible from a small but scalable sample: say, 0.1% of all data pages on large tables, up to the limit of maintenance_work_mem.
Setting up these samples as a % of data pages, rather than a pure random sort, makes this more feasable; for example, a 70GB table would only need to sample about 9000 data pages (or 70MB). Of course, larger samples would lead to better accuracy, and this could be set through a revised GUC (i.e., maximum_sample_size, minimum_sample_size). I just need a little help doing the math ... please? -- --Josh Josh Berkus Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]