Re: Null values in indexes - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Tom Lane
Subject Re: Null values in indexes
Date
Msg-id 23920.1022688441@sss.pgh.pa.us
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Null values in indexes  (Jan Wieck <janwieck@yahoo.com>)
List pgsql-hackers
Jan Wieck <janwieck@yahoo.com> writes:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>> Hannu Krosing <hannu@tm.ee> writes:
> How hard would it be to _not_ include nulls in indexes
> as they are not used anyway.
>> 
>> Seems to me that would be a step backwards.

>     It  would cause multi-key indexes beeing unusable for partial
>     key lookup. Imagine you have a key over (a, b, c)  and  query
>     with  WHERE  a = 1 AND b = 2. This query cannot use the index
>     if a NULL value in c  would  cause  the  index  entry  to  be
>     suppressed.

Urgh ... that means GiST indexing is actually broken, because GiST
currently handles multicolumns but not nulls.  AFAIR the planner
will try to use partial qualification on any multicolumn index...
it had better avoid doing so for non-null-capable AMs.

Alternatively, we could fix GiST to support nulls.  Oleg, Teodor:
how far away might that be?
        regards, tom lane


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