JmH <jason.height@gmail.com> writes:
> I am struggling to understand why for certain criteria that i supply for a
> query alters the the query plan. In my "good" case i can see that an index
> is used, in my bad case where i only change the text value of the criteria,
> but not the criteria itslef (ie change/add the conditions) a hbitmap heap
> scan of the table is performed.
I think you're jumping to conclusions. The second plan is processing
about 100 times as many rows, because the WHERE conditions are much less
selective. A change in plan is entirely appropriate.
It might be that you need to change planner parameters (particularly
random_page_cost/seq_page_cost) to more nearly approximate the operating
conditions of your database, but I'd recommend being very cautious about
doing so on the basis of a small number of example queries. In
particular it's easy to fall into the trap of optimizing for
fully-cached scenarios because repeatedly trying the same example
results in touching only already-cached data --- but that might or might
not be reflective of your whole workload.
regards, tom lane
