> > The bottom line here is likely to be "you need more RAM" :-( > > Yup. Just trying to get a handle on what I can do if I need more than > 16G > Of ram... That's as much as I can put on the installed based of > servers.... 100s of them. > > > > > I wonder whether there is a way to use table partitioning to > > make the insert pattern more localized? We'd need to know a > > lot more about your insertion patterns to guess how, though. > > > > regards, tom lane > > We're doing partitioning as well..... > > I'm guessing that you basically have a data collection application that sends in lots of records, and a reporting application that wants summaries of the data? So, if I understand the problem correctly, you don't have enough ram (or may not in the future) to index the data as it comes in. Not sure how much you can change the design, but what about either updating a summary table(s) as the records come in (trigger, part of the transaction, or do it in the application) or, index periodically? In otherwords, load a partition (say a day's worth) then index that partition all at once. If you're doing real-time analysis that might not work so well though, but the summary tables should. I assume the application generates unique records on its own due to the timestamp, so this isn't really about checking for constraint violations? If so, you can probably do away with the index on the tables that you're running the inserts on. - Bucky