title: Slow simple update query on PostgreSQL database with 3 million rows
body: <p>I am trying a simple <code>UPDATE table SET column1 = 0</code> on a table with about 3 million rows on Postegres 8.4 but it is taking forever to finish. It has been running for more than 10 min.</p>
  <p>Before, I tried to run a VACUUM and ANALYZE commands on that table and I also tried to create some indexes (although I doubt this will make any difference in this case) but none seems to help.</p>
  <p>Any other ideas?</p>
  <p><strong>Update:</strong></p>
  <p>This is the table structure:</p>
  <pre><code>CREATE TABLE myTable
  (
    id bigserial NOT NULL,
    title text,
    description text,
    link text,
    &quot;type&quot; character varying(255),
    generalFreq real,
    generalWeight real,
    author_id bigint,
    status_id bigint,
    CONSTRAINT resources_pkey PRIMARY KEY (id),
    CONSTRAINT author_pkey FOREIGN KEY (author_id)
        REFERENCES users (id) MATCH SIMPLE
        ON UPDATE NO ACTION ON DELETE NO ACTION,
    CONSTRAINT c_unique_status_id UNIQUE (status_id)
  );
  </code></pre>
  <p>I am trying to run <code>UPDATE myTable SET generalFreq = 0;</code></p>