work-mem tells the size of physical memory only, virtual memory is always there off course in case you run out of available memory. I recommend you reading PostgreSQL internals for all this stuff: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.0/static/internals.html --Imad www.EnterpriseDB.com On 1/29/07, Campbell, Lance <lance@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
I have been researching how to improve my overall performance of postgres. I am a little confused on the reasoning for how work-mem is used in the postgresql.conf file. The way I understand the documentation is you define with work-mem how much memory you want to allocate per search. Couldn't you run out of memory? This approach seems kind of odd to me. How do you tell the system not to allocate too much memory if you all of the sudden got hit with a heavier number of queries? Thanks, Lance Campbell Project Manager/Software Architect Web Services at Public Affairs University of Illinois 217.333.0382 http://webservices.uiuc.edu
