[eddd-ddde]

I never got to test this, but I always wanted to explore in postgres using table partitions to store soft deleted items in a different drive as a kind of archived storage.

I'm pretty sure it is possible, and it might even yield some performance improvements.

That way you wouldn't have to worry about deleted items impacting performance too much.

[gleenn]

It's definitely an interesting approach but the problem is now you have to change all your queries and undeleting get more complicated. There are strong trade-offs with almost all the approaches I've heard of.

[snuxoll]

With partitioning? No you don't. It gets a bit messy if you also want to partition a table by other values (like tenant id or something), since then you probably need to get into using table inheritance instead of the easier declarative partitioning - but either technique just gives you a single effective table to query.

[edmundsauto]

Pg moves the data between positions on update?

[bandrami]

If you are updating the parent table and the partition key is correctly defined, then an update that puts a row in a different partition is translated into a delete on the original child table and an insert on the new child table, since v11 IIRC. But this can lead to some weird results if you're using multiple inheritance so, well, don't.

[tomnipotent]

I believe they were just pointing out that Postgres doesn't do in-place updates, so every update (with or without partitions) is a write followed by marking the previous tuple deleted so it can get vacuumed.

[snuxoll]

That’s not at all what the child to me was saying in even a generous reading.

But HOT updates are a thing, too.

[paulddraper]

IDK if the different drive is necessary, but yes partitioning on a deleted field would work.

Memory >>>>> Disk in importance.