Re: ISNULL performance tweaks - Mailing list pgsql-performance

From Josh Berkus
Subject Re: ISNULL performance tweaks
Date
Msg-id 200303061112.07285.josh@agliodbs.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to ISNULL performance tweaks  (Matt Mello <alien@spaceship.com>)
List pgsql-performance
Matt,

> Man, I wish PG indexed nulls!  Is there any plan on adding these in the
> future?

BTW, this is a design argument.  As far as a lot of SQL-geeks are concerned
(and I'm one of them) use of NULLs should be minimized or eliminiated
entirely from well-normalized database designs.   In such designs, IS NULL
queries are used only for outer joins (where indexes don't matter) or for
data integrity maintainence (where query speed doesn't matter).

As a result, the existing core team doesn't see this issue as a priority.
What fixing it requires is a new programmer who cares enough about it to hack
it.  What would be really nice is the ability to create an index WITH NULLS,
as follows:

CREATE INDEX idx_tablename_one ON tablename(column_one) WITH NULLS;


--
-Josh Berkus
 Aglio Database Solutions
 San Francisco


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