On Thu, 2005-12-08 at 16:05, Tom Lane wrote: [SNIP] > There isn't any way for it to do that (ie, be sure everyone else has > adjusted to the new state of affairs), short of acquiring some sort of > short-term exclusive lock on the table, which is a really bad idea. > The pending lock would block other incoming requests on the table until > all the current users exited their transactions. >
But it is an acceptable compromise to lock the table until all current transactions are over... the alternative for reindexing a big table is usually to schedule a down-time, which is even worse... REINDEX is usually used to fix a big tables big index bloat, and that won't fly without a downtime, or, with this short-term full table lock in a low-traffic time-slot. For my usage patterns I would vote with the table lock if it is just a means of blocking new transactions until the running ones finish. I'll just make sure there are none long running when I issue the REINDEX... Cheers, Csaba. ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
