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Too many tables are bad for you
Managing too many tables in PostgreSQL can degrade performance by bloating system catalogs and increasing query planning overhead.
What: Excessive table counts lead to higher I/O demands and slower catalog lookups. Recommendations include consolidating small tables, avoiding schema-per-tenant patterns, and using native declarative partitioning.
Why it matters: PostgreSQL's internal catalog performance scales poorly with massive table counts; architectural patterns that work for application logic often clash with database engine limitations.
Takeaway: Monitor pg_class and total table counts in your database, and plan to consolidate small, related tables before you hit performance bottlenecks.
Decoder
- Catalog (System Catalog): The collection of internal tables that store metadata about all other tables, indexes, and objects in the database; it is queried during every query plan.
Original article
Having too many tables in PostgreSQL is a bad idea and can seriously hurt performance. The hidden costs can come from bloated catalogs and slower query planning to increased I/O. Practical guidance includes consolidating small, related tables, avoiding excessive schema-per-tenant patterns, monitoring catalog size and planning time, and using inheritance or declarative partitioning when appropriate.
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