> Actually, I suspect in most cases it won't matter; I don't think people > make a habit of trying to sort their entire database. :) But we'd want > to protect for the oddball cases... yech.
I can make query result sets that are far larger than the database itself. create table fat_table_with_few_tuples(fat_status_id serial primary key, fat_1 text, fat_2 text); create table thin_table_with_many_tuples(fat_status_id integer references fat_table_with_few_tuples, thin_1 integer, thin_2 integer); SELECT * FROM thin_table_with_many_tuples NATURAL JOIN fat_table_with_few_tuples order by fat_1, thin_1, thin_2, fat_2; I would be asking the folks trying to use PostgreSQL for data warehousing what their opinion is. A few fact tables in an audit query could easily result in a very large amount of temporary diskspace being required. -- ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq