stp,
I cannot help you with the first point, but as far as performance analysis, I share with you what I've been using.
1) pgbench -- which comes with PostgreSQL 2) OSDB (http://osdb.sourceforge.net/) 3) pg_autotune (http://pgfoundry.org/projects/pgautotune/) 4) PQA (http://pgfoundry.org/projects/pqa/)
You did not mention how your database is being used/going to be used. If its already in production, use PQA, but I personally have not implemented yet since seemed to be to take a performance hit of 15-25% when running it. Your mileage may vary.
I use pgbench for quick tests and OSDB for more disk thrash testing.
I am new to this; maybe someone else may be able to speak from more experience.
Regards.
Steve Poe
---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 9: the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match
