Planner Statistics

In order for queries to execute quickly, the PostgreSQL query planner needs to have accurate statistics about the tables in your database. See Statistics Used by the Planner and Using EXPLAIN for more information about this.

Statistics are updated by running the VACUUM ANALYZE, either against the whole database or against the table you're interested in. Starting in PostgreSQL 8.1, you can automate this task by using the Auto-Vacuum Daemon. This can take some configuration to setup usefully, in PostgreSQL 8.3 auto-vacuum is intelligent and well tuned enough that it's turned on by default.

The most popular tunable that controls statistics gathering is default_statistics_target, which can be set per table and column with ALTER TABLE SET STATISTICS. The useful range is generally 10 (the default) to 100. Higher settings can cause the statistics collection process itself to be a drag on performance. For more information, see the long thread on Better default_statistics_target - Part 2.