Subject: Re: Prefetch
From: Rod Taylor <pg@rbt.ca>
To: Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au>
Cc: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org, molson@oceanconsulting.com,
	Sam Vilain <sam@vilain.net>
In-Reply-To: <42818FB1.4060403@familyhealth.com.au>
References: <200505100652.51401.molson@oceanconsulting.com>
	<42818B2E.8060403@vilain.net>  <42818FB1.4060403@familyhealth.com.au>
Content-Type: text/plain
Date: Wed, 11 May 2005 09:42:30 -0400
Message-Id: <1115818950.725.6.camel@home>
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On Wed, 2005-05-11 at 12:53 +0800, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:
> > Another trick you can use with large data sets like this when you want 
> > results
> > back in seconds is to have regularly updated tables that aggregate the data
> > along each column normally aggregated against the main data set.
> 
> > Maybe some bright person will prove me wrong by posting some working
> > information about how to get these apparently absent features working.
> 
> Most people just use simple triggers to maintain aggregate summary tables...

Agreed. I've also got a view which calls a function that will 1) use the
summary table where data exists, or 2) calculate the summary
information, load it into summary table, and send a copy to the client
(partial query results cache).

It's not all nicely abstracted behind user friendly syntax, but most of
those features can be cobbled together (with effort) in PostgreSQL.
--