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You're reading from  PostgreSQL 14 Administration Cookbook

Product typeBook
Published inMar 2022
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781803248974
Edition1st Edition
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Authors (2):
Simon Riggs
Simon Riggs
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Simon Riggs

Simon Riggs is the CTO of 2ndQuadrant, having contributed to PostgreSQL as a major developer and committer for 14 years. He has written and designed features for replication, performance, BI, management, and security. Under his guidance, 2ndQuadrant is now a leading developer of open source PostgreSQL, serving hundreds of clients in USA, Europe, and worldwide. Simon is a frequent speaker at many conferences on PostgreSQL Futures. He has worked as a database architect for 30 years.
Read more about Simon Riggs

Gianni Ciolli
Gianni Ciolli
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Gianni Ciolli

Gianni Ciolli is the Vice President for Solutions Architecture at EnterpriseDB (EDB). As a PostgreSQL consultant, he has driven many successful enterprise deployments for customers in every part of the globe.Gianni is respected worldwide as a popular speaker and trainer at many PostgreSQL conferences in Europe and abroad over the last 14 years. He has worked with free and open-source software since the 1990s as an active member of the community (Prato Linux User Group, and Italian PostgreSQL Users Group). Gianni has a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Florence. He lives in London with his son. His other interests include music, drama, poetry and athletics.
Read more about Gianni Ciolli

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Usage of disk space by temporary data

In addition to ordinary persistent tables, you can also create temporary tables. Temporary tables have disk files for their data, just as persistent tables do, but those files will be stored in one of the tablespaces listed in the temp_tablespaces parameter or, if not set, the default tablespace.

PostgreSQL may also use temporary files for query processing for sorts, hash joins, or hold cursors if they are larger than your current work_mem parameter setting.

So, how do you find out how much data is being used by temporary tables and files? You can do this by using any untrusted embedded language, or directly on the database host.

Getting ready

You have to use an untrusted language because trusted languages run in a sandbox, which prohibits them from directly accessing the host filesystem.

How to do it…

Perform the following steps:

  1. First, check whether your database defines special tablespaces for...
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PostgreSQL 14 Administration Cookbook
Published in: Mar 2022Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781803248974

Authors (2)

author image
Simon Riggs

Simon Riggs is the CTO of 2ndQuadrant, having contributed to PostgreSQL as a major developer and committer for 14 years. He has written and designed features for replication, performance, BI, management, and security. Under his guidance, 2ndQuadrant is now a leading developer of open source PostgreSQL, serving hundreds of clients in USA, Europe, and worldwide. Simon is a frequent speaker at many conferences on PostgreSQL Futures. He has worked as a database architect for 30 years.
Read more about Simon Riggs

author image
Gianni Ciolli

Gianni Ciolli is the Vice President for Solutions Architecture at EnterpriseDB (EDB). As a PostgreSQL consultant, he has driven many successful enterprise deployments for customers in every part of the globe.Gianni is respected worldwide as a popular speaker and trainer at many PostgreSQL conferences in Europe and abroad over the last 14 years. He has worked with free and open-source software since the 1990s as an active member of the community (Prato Linux User Group, and Italian PostgreSQL Users Group). Gianni has a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Florence. He lives in London with his son. His other interests include music, drama, poetry and athletics.
Read more about Gianni Ciolli