The autovacuum launcher process

This is an optional process. There is a parameter called autovacuum in postgresql.conf, with ON as default value. This process automates the execution of vacuum and analyzes commands based on a few parameters. To understand autovacuum, first, we have to understand vacuum.

Assume that we delete a few records from a table. PostgreSQL does not immediately remove the deleted tuples from the data files. These are marked as deleted. Similarly, when a record is updated, it's roughly equivalent to one delete and one insert. The previous version of the record continues to be in the data file. Each update of a database row generates a new version of the row. The reason is simple: there can be active transactions, which want to see the data as it was before. As a result of this activity, there will be a lot of unusable space in the data files. After some time, these dead records become irrelevant as there are no transactions still around to see the old data. However,...