Hello, in a Facebook game running on PostgreSQL 8.4.13 and having so many players: # select count(*) from pref_users; count -------- 223964 I am trying to get rid of inactive users, who just visited the canvas page, but never played (I'm sure, Facebook has a clever-sounding name for them): # select count(*) from pref_users where id not in (select distinct id from pref_money); count -------- 173936 (1 row) So I call: # delete from pref_users where id not in (select distinct id from pref_money); but that query lasts forever and what's more troubling me - it blocks the async queries of my game daemon (the Perl function pg_ready starts returning false all the time and my game accumulates thousands of yet-to-be-executed SQL queries). The good news is, that my quad server doesn't hang - I just see 1 postmaster process at 90-100% CPU but total load is 20%. Also my game daemon in Perl recovers and executes the thousands of queued up async queries, when I interrupt the above DELETE query with CTRL-C at the pgsql prompt - i.e. my game is not buggy. My question is how handle this? Why does deleting takes so long, is it because of CASCADES? And why does it make the pg_ready calls of my game daemon return false? The users I'm deleting aren't active, they shouldn't "intersect" with the async queries of my game daemon. Below are the both SQL tables involved, thank you for any insights. Regards Alex # \d pref_money Table "public.pref_money" Column | Type | Modifiers --------+-----------------------+----------------------------------------- id | character varying(32) | money | integer | not null yw | character(7) | default to_char(now(), 'IYYY-IW'::text) Indexes: "pref_money_money_index" btree (money DESC) "pref_money_yw_index" btree (yw) Foreign-key constraints: "pref_money_id_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (id) REFERENCES pref_users(id) ON DELETE CASCADE # \d pref_users Table "public.pref_users" Column | Type | Modifiers ------------+-----------------------------+-------------------- id | character varying(32) | not null first_name | character varying(64) | last_name | character varying(64) | female | boolean | avatar | character varying(128) | city | character varying(64) | login | timestamp without time zone | default now() last_ip | inet | logout | timestamp without time zone | vip | timestamp without time zone | mail | character varying(254) | medals | integer | not null default 0 Indexes: "pref_users_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (id) Referenced by: TABLE "pref_cards" CONSTRAINT "pref_cards_id_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (id) REFERENCES pref_users(id) ON DELETE CASCADE TABLE "pref_catch" CONSTRAINT "pref_catch_id_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (id) REFERENCES pref_users(id) ON DELETE CASCADE TABLE "pref_chat" CONSTRAINT "pref_chat_id_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (id) REFERENCES pref_users(id) ON DELETE CASCADE TABLE "pref_discuss" CONSTRAINT "pref_discuss_id_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (id) REFERENCES pref_users(id) ON DELETE CASCADE TABLE "pref_game" CONSTRAINT "pref_game_id_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (id) REFERENCES pref_users(id) ON DELETE CASCADE TABLE "pref_luck" CONSTRAINT "pref_luck_id_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (id) REFERENCES pref_users(id) ON DELETE CASCADE TABLE "pref_match" CONSTRAINT "pref_match_id_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (id) REFERENCES pref_users(id) ON DELETE CASCADE TABLE "pref_misere" CONSTRAINT "pref_misere_id_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (id) REFERENCES pref_users(id) ON DELETE CASCADE TABLE "pref_money" CONSTRAINT "pref_money_id_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (id) REFERENCES pref_users(id) ON DELETE CASCADE TABLE "pref_pass" CONSTRAINT "pref_pass_id_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (id) REFERENCES pref_users(id) ON DELETE CASCADE TABLE "pref_payment" CONSTRAINT "pref_payment_id_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (id) REFERENCES pref_users(id) ON DELETE CASCADE TABLE "pref_rep" CONSTRAINT "pref_rep_author_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (author) REFERENCES pref_users(id) ON DELETE CASCADE TABLE "pref_rep" CONSTRAINT "pref_rep_id_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (id) REFERENCES pref_users(id) ON DELETE CASCADE TABLE "pref_scores" CONSTRAINT "pref_scores_id_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (id) REFERENCES pref_users(id) ON DELETE CASCADE TABLE "pref_status" CONSTRAINT "pref_status_id_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (id) REFERENCES pref_users(id) ON DELETE CASCADE TABLE "pref_votes" CONSTRAINT "pref_votes_id_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (id) REFERENCES pref_users(id) ON DELETE CASCADE -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general