Wow! That was almost instantaneous. I can't believe the difference. The only inconvenience is that I need to remove all the foreign key constraints before truncating, then put them back after. But I suppose it is a small price to pay for this incredible optimization. Thank you! On Fri, 2006-06-16 at 12:52 +0530, Gourish Singbal wrote: > > David, > > Truncate table would be a good idea if u want to delete all the data > in the table. > You need not perform vacuum in this case since there are no dead rows > created. > > ~gourish > > > On 6/16/06, David Leangen <postgres@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Hello! > > I am trying to delete an entire table. There are about 41,000 > rows in > the table (based on count(*)). > > I am using the SQL comment: delete from table; > > The operation seems to take in the order of hours, rather than > seconds > or minutes. > > "Explain delete from table" gives me: > > QUERY PLAN > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > Seq Scan on table (cost=0.00..3967.74 rows=115374 width=6) > (1 row) > > > I am using an Intel Pentium D 2.8GHz CPU. My system has about > 1.2GB of > RAM. This should be ok... my database isn't that big, I think. > > > Any ideas why this takes so long and how I could speed this > up? > > Or alternatively, is there a better way to delete all the > contents from > a table? > > > Thank you! > > > > ---------------------------(end of > broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings > > > > -- > Best, > Gourish Singbal
