Tablespaces

A common paradigm for optimizing performance in database systems is the use of tablespaces to organize disk layout.

Declaring tablespaces for tables

A tablespace can be specified for the table generated by a model by supplying the db_tablespace option inside the model’s class Meta. This option also affects tables automatically created for ManyToManyFields in the model.

You can use the DEFAULT_TABLESPACE setting to specify a default value for db_tablespace. This is useful for setting a tablespace for the built-in Django apps and other applications whose code you cannot control.

Declaring tablespaces for indexes

You can pass the db_tablespace option to a Field constructor to specify an alternate tablespace for the Field’s column index. If no index would be created for the column, the option is ignored.

You can use the DEFAULT_INDEX_TABLESPACE setting to specify a default value for db_tablespace.

If db_tablespace isn’t specified and you didn’t set DEFAULT_INDEX_TABLESPACE, the index is created in the same tablespace as the tables.

An example

class TablespaceExample(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=30, db_index=True, db_tablespace="indexes")
    data = models.CharField(max_length=255, db_index=True)
    edges = models.ManyToManyField(to="self", db_tablespace="indexes")

    class Meta:
        db_tablespace = "tables"

In this example, the tables generated by the TablespaceExample model (i.e. the model table and the many-to-many table) would be stored in the tables tablespace. The index for the name field and the indexes on the many-to-many table would be stored in the indexes tablespace. The data field would also generate an index, but no tablespace for it is specified, so it would be stored in the model tablespace tables by default.

Database support

PostgreSQL and Oracle support tablespaces. SQLite and MySQL don’t.

When you use a backend that lacks support for tablespaces, Django ignores all tablespace-related options.