Received: from maia.hub.org (maia-3.hub.org [200.46.204.243]) by mail.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 59DD3B5D91F for ; Mon, 12 Sep 2011 14:33:43 -0300 (ADT) Received: from mail.postgresql.org ([200.46.204.86]) by maia.hub.org (mx1.hub.org [200.46.204.243]) (amavisd-maia, port 10024) with ESMTP id 32408-07 for ; Mon, 12 Sep 2011 17:33:35 +0000 (UTC) X-Greylist: from auto-whitelisted by SQLgrey-1.7.6 Received: from mxnip01-missouri-out.um.umsystem.edu (mxnip01-missouri-out.um.umsystem.edu [209.106.229.53]) by mail.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7F327B5DC17 for ; Mon, 12 Sep 2011 14:33:35 -0300 (ADT) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: Av0EAEdBbk7RauQW/2dsb2JhbABBp294ghFAPRYYAwIBAgE3ARMNCAEBnnWWEIh/hm4Eh22QZQmMHA Received: from um-tsmtpin1.um.umsystem.edu ([209.106.228.22]) by mxnip01-missouri-out.um.umsystem.edu with ESMTP; 12 Sep 2011 12:33:34 -0500 Received: from um-tsmtpout1.um.umsystem.edu ([209.106.228.23]) by um-tsmtpin1.um.umsystem.edu with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.4675); Mon, 12 Sep 2011 12:33:33 -0500 Received: from [128.206.129.163] ([128.206.129.163]) by um-tsmtpout1.um.umsystem.edu over TLS secured channel with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.4675); Mon, 12 Sep 2011 12:33:33 -0500 Message-ID: <4E6E426D.7060405@missouri.edu> Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2011 12:33:33 -0500 From: Robert Schnabel User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.2; WOW64; rv:6.0.2) Gecko/20110902 Thunderbird/6.0.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: pgsql-performance Subject: Allow sorts to use more available memory Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-OriginalArrivalTime: 12 Sep 2011 17:33:33.0668 (UTC) FILETIME=[18698240:01CC7172] X-Virus-Scanned: Maia Mailguard 1.0.1 X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-1.9 tagged_above=-10 required=5 tests=BAYES_00=-1.9 X-Spam-Level: X-Archive-Number: 201109/149 X-Sequence-Number: 44925 The recent "data warehouse" thread made me think about how I use work_mem for some of my big queries. So I tried SET work_mem = '4GB' for a session and got ERROR: 4194304 is outside the valid range for parameter "work_mem" (64 .. 2097151) A bit of searching turned up the "Allow sorts to use more available memory" section of the to-do list. Am I correct in reading that the max_val is 2GB and regardless of how much RAM I have in the box I'm stuck with only using 2GB? Am I missing something? I'm using: PostgreSQL 9.0.4, compiled by Visual C++ build 1500, 64-bit Windows 2008 Server Enterprise Thanks, Bob