Massive delete of rows, how to proceed?

["Peter Childs" <peterachilds(at)gmail(dot)com>]

On 24/11/06, Arnau <arnaulist(at)andromeiberica(dot)com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
>    I have a table with statistics with more than 15 million rows. I'd
> like to delete the oldest statistics and this can be about 7 million
> rows. Which method would you recommend me to do this? I'd be also
> interested in calculate some kind of statistics about these deleted
> rows, like how many rows have been deleted for date. I was thinking in
> creating a function, any recommendations?


Copy and drop old table. If you delete you will have a massive problem
with a bloated table and  vacuum will not help unless you expect the
table to grow to this size regulally otherwise vacuum full will take
ages.

Peter.