Last year, there was a problem involving stats_command_string in early 8.1.x http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-bugs/2006-01/msg00151.php I see mentions of performance improvements in the statistics collector for 8.2.x http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.2/static/release-8-2.html "Improve performance of statistics monitoring, especially stats_command_string (Tom, Bruce) This release enables stats_command_string by default, now that its overhead is minimal." Did those improvements ever get applied to postgres 8.1.y ? perhaps in 8.1.8 or 8.1.9 ? thank you, - Scott Bjerke DBA, intercasting corporation