Re: [HACKERS] PostgreSQL v7.2b2 Released

> What does VACUUM do if it doesn´t shrink the size of the database?
>

I was wondering the same thing, so I looked at the development docs and it 
appears that regular VACUUM frees the dead tuples so that the space on a page 
may be reused. This approach doesn't actually reduce the number of pages 
allocated though, it reduces the chances that more pages will be allocated 
(because the pages have free space to make tuples in). VACUUM FULL packs all 
the tuples together and actually reduces the number of allocated pages. You 
should be able to run a DB 24x7 by issuing only VACUUM without the disk usage 
growing out of control.

Jeff Davis

> Saludos... :-)