I've been having problems where a HashAggregate is used because of a bad estimate of the distinct number of elements involved. In the following example the total number of domain IDs is about 2/3 of the number of rows, and it's estimated at about 1/15 of the actual value. This will occasionally cause the generated query to use a HashAggregate, and this runs the backend out of memory - it will use 700 or more meg before failing. The following was run -immediately- after a vacuum. explain analyze select sum(count) as sumc,class,domain_id into temp new_clicks from clicks,countries where date > (current_date - 20) and clicks.country_id=countries.country_id group by domain_id,class; GroupAggregate (cost=1136261.89..1183383.51 rows=191406 width=12) (actual time=138375.935..163794.452 rows=3258152 loops=1) -> Sort (cost=1136261.89..1147922.66 rows=4664311 width=12) (actual time=138374.865..147308.343 rows=4514313 loops=1) Sort Key: clicks.domain_id, countries."class" -> Hash Join (cost=4.72..421864.06 rows=4664311 width=12) (actual time=6837.405..66938.259 rows=4514313 loops=1) Hash Cond: ("outer".country_id = "inner".country_id) -> Seq Scan on clicks (cost=0.00..351894.67 rows=4664311 width=12) (actual time=6836.388..46865.490 rows=4514313 loops=1) Filter: (date > (('now'::text)::date - 20)) -> Hash (cost=4.18..4.18 rows=218 width=8) (actual time=0.946..0.946 rows=0 loops=1) -> Seq Scan on countries (cost=0.00..4.18 rows=218 width=8) (actual time=0.011..0.516 rows=218 loops=1) Total runtime: 175404.738 ms (10 rows) -- Mike Harding <mvh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 7: don't forget to increase your free space map settings