PostgreSQL version 8.2 introduced some performance features, such as query level performance and sorting performance and improvement in vacuuming. This section describes only the performance features. For a full list of features introduced in version 8.2 look at the release notes of PostgreSQL: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.2/static/release-8-2.html
Let's look at the features:
- Memory settings in the
postgresql.conffile can be specified in standard units such as 1 MB, rather than as simply raw integers whose settings depends on the server units. - Indexes can be created concurrently, without blocking writes to the table.
- You can watch the autovacuum daemon work in
pg_stat_activity, and it records what it has done in views such aspg_stat_user_tables. - Tables and indexes can have a
FILLFACTORthat allows better clustering when inserting data out of order. - The
seq_page_costconfiguration parameter was added, allowing easier fine tuning of how expensive the query...