Text field performance

Started by Glen Parkerabout 20 years ago4 messagesgeneral
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#1Glen Parker
glenebob@nwlink.com

We are having some performance issues we think may be related to large
text field values, and many records. So, a couple questions...

1) Are text values always stored in the companion text file, or only if
they exceed a certain size? What size?

2) When the query executer reads tuples during a query, does it always
read the text companion file too? For example, the executer finds an
index match and then goes after the heap tuple to continue field
matching. Now, assuming the query does not contain any conditions
involving a text field, does the executer read the text field in even if
the tuple does not match and won't be included in the result set?

3) Is there any eqivelent to the CLUSTER functionality for text
companion files? Is there any such thing planned? What's the best way
to reduce fragmentation in a text companion file?

TIA

-Glen

#2Tom Lane
tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
In reply to: Glen Parker (#1)
Re: Text field performance

Glen Parker <glenebob@nwlink.com> writes:

We are having some performance issues we think may be related to large
text field values, and many records. So, a couple questions...

See
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/storage-toast.html

regards, tom lane

#3Glen Parker
glenebob@nwlink.com
In reply to: Tom Lane (#2)
Re: Text field performance

We're still on 7.4 (sorry, probly should have mentioned that). Does
that documentation apply to the 7.4 series as well?

Maybe an easier question is, can we expect a TOAST performance increase
when upgrading to 8.1?

Thx again...

-Glen

Tom Lane wrote:

Show quoted text

Glen Parker <glenebob@nwlink.com> writes:

We are having some performance issues we think may be related to large
text field values, and many records. So, a couple questions...

See
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/storage-toast.html

regards, tom lane

#4Neil Conway
neilc@samurai.com
In reply to: Glen Parker (#3)
Re: Text field performance

On Tue, 2006-01-17 at 15:01 -0800, Glen Parker wrote:

We're still on 7.4 (sorry, probly should have mentioned that). Does
that documentation apply to the 7.4 series as well?

AFAIK, there haven't been any major changes to TOAST since 7.4, so most
of that documentation should be applicable.

Maybe an easier question is, can we expect a TOAST performance increase
when upgrading to 8.1?

A lot of performance improvements have been made since since 7.4, but I
don't believe any of them have affected TOAST in particular.

-Neil