seq-scan or index-scan - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Andreas Kretschmer
Subject seq-scan or index-scan
Date
Msg-id 20120703155859.GA5956@tux
Whole thread Raw
Responses Re: seq-scan or index-scan  ("Tomas Vondra" <tv@fuzzy.cz>)
Re: seq-scan or index-scan  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
List pgsql-general
Dear list,

i have a table and i'm selecting all records without a where-condition, and i don't need a ORDER BY:



production=*# explain analyse select * from boxes;
                                                  QUERY PLAN
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Seq Scan on boxes  (cost=0.00..990783.99 rows=6499 width=581) (actual time=6.514..4588.136 rows=3060 loops=1)
 Total runtime: 4588.729 ms
(2 rows)


It's slow, so i tried with an ORDER BY:



production=# explain analyse select * from boxes order by id;
                                                           QUERY PLAN

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Index Scan using boxes_pkey on boxes  (cost=0.00..162437.00 rows=6499 width=581) (actual time=0.065..55.730 rows=3060
loops=1)
 Total runtime: 56.169 ms
(2 rows)


Why not using the index (it's a primary key) for the first query?

PG 9.1.3



Andreas
--
Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely
unintentional side effect.                              (Linus Torvalds)
"If I was god, I would recompile penguin with --enable-fly."   (unknown)
Kaufbach, Saxony, Germany, Europe.              N 51.05082°, E 13.56889°

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