PG
PRO
HV001ERRORTier 2 — Caution✅ HIGH confidence

FDW out of memory

Category: Foreign Data Wrapper ErrorVersions: All Postgres versions (with FDW extension)

What this means

SQLSTATE HV001 is raised when a foreign data wrapper cannot allocate sufficient memory to perform its operation.

Why it happens

  1. 1The FDW process exhausts available memory while processing a large foreign table query

How to reproduce

FDW memory exhaustion on a large query.

trigger — this will ERROR
ERROR: foreign-data wrapper memory allocation failed

Fix 1: Reduce the result set from the foreign table query

When HV001 appears on foreign table queries.

fix
SELECT * FROM foreign_table WHERE date > CURRENT_DATE - 30 LIMIT 1000;

Why this works

Adding WHERE conditions and LIMIT reduces the amount of data the FDW must buffer in memory.

Fix 2: Increase work_mem for the session

When the operation genuinely requires more memory.

fix
SET work_mem = '256MB';

Why this works

Increasing work_mem allows the FDW to use more memory for sorting and buffering foreign data.

Sources

📚 Official docs: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/errcodes-appendix.html

🔧 Source ref: Class HV — Foreign Data Wrapper Error

Confidence assessment

✅ HIGH confidence

Standard SQLSTATE for FDW memory errors. Stable across versions.

See also

📄 Reference pages

postgres_fdwwork_mem
⚙️ This error reference was generated with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy. Examples are provided to illustrate common scenarios and may not cover every case. Always test fixes in a development environment before applying to production. Spotted an error? Suggest a correction →