Cookbook recipe

Partition a growing table with declarative partitioning

Applies to PostgreSQL 13–17 Last reviewed May 2026 Grounded in source

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Estimated investigation4 min

Scenario

A single table is too big to vacuum, index, or prune efficiently. Range partitioning by time makes maintenance and queries fast. Diagnose it Create a partitioned parent and a monthly child: CREATE TABLE events (id bigint,…

Investigation Path

A single table is too big to vacuum, index, or prune efficiently. Range partitioning by time makes maintenance and queries fast.

Diagnose it

Create a partitioned parent and a monthly child:

CREATE TABLE events (id bigint, ts timestamptz, ...)
  PARTITION BY RANGE (ts);
CREATE TABLE events_2026_05 PARTITION OF events
  FOR VALUES FROM ('2026-05-01') TO ('2026-06-01');

Why it happens

Declarative partitioning splits one logical table into physical children by key range/list/hash. The planner prunes irrelevant partitions, and you can drop old data instantly by detaching a partition.

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Concepts on this page

Partitioning Query planner VACUUM Index
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