Re: Major upgrade advice - Mailing list pgsql-admin

I got curious and did a few tests on a 8.3.3 database on my laptop.
The 3 different queries all worked, but one took twice as long.

The table alarmlogg has ~930000 rows, query returns ~260000 rows.
Column alarm_tid is timestamp with time zone.
There is an index on alarm_tid.

select * from alarmlogg where alarm_tid between '2007-05-20 00:00:00'
and '2008-05-20 23:59:59';
--> 152 seconds.

select * from alarmlogg where (alarm_tid >= '2007-05-20 00:00:00') and
(alarm_tid <= '2008-05-20 23:59:59');
--> 151 seconds.

SELECT * FROM alarmlogg WHERE alarm_tid >= CAST('2007-05-20' as
timestamp) AND alarm_tid < CAST('2008-05-21' as timestamp);
--> 301 seconds.

I am using the syntax in the second example in my programs. It has
worked since 8.0.

Regards
Jan-Ivar Mellingen


Roberto Garcia skrev:
> We changed it because 8.3 doesn't allow the operator LIKE on timestamp
> columns. Your syntax works fine but we weren't used to use as u do.
> There weren't any specific reason, only another way to do that.
>
> I think when we read that operator LIKE and timestamp values were
> incompatible we assumed that timestamp values couldn't be compared to
> any char value, opposed as your syntax is.
>
> We've tried to do "select * from X where <timestamp column> =
> '2008-05-20 10:'", expecting that the result would be any minute from
> 10 o'clock (10:15, 10:30, 10:45, etc) of the specific date, but this
> syntax retrieves only 10:00 from that date.
>
> Tks for the new syntax.
>
> Regards
> Roberto Garcia
>
> Gregory S. Youngblood wrote:
>> That's a pretty substantial change.  Why did you have to make this
>> change?
>> Was it causing syntax errors or to get better performance on those
>> types of
>> queries? Actually, now that I think about it, didn't:
>> select * from X where <timestamp column> between '2008-05-20
>> 00:00:00' and
>> '2008-05-20 23:59:59' work? I could have sworn I have used that
>> syntax in 8.2 without having to
>> arbitrarily cast the arguments... now I'm going to have to go look. :)
>>
>> Yup, confirmed, 8.2.7 and no casting on the date arguments when I was
>> using
>> between.
>>
>> I'm just curious if there was a specific reason (i.e. better
>> performance,
>> better use of indexes, etc.) for your syntax.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Greg
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: pgsql-admin-owner@postgresql.org
>> [mailto:pgsql-admin-owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of Roberto Garcia
>> Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 12:01 PM
>> Cc: pgsql-admin@postgresql.org
>> Subject: Re: [ADMIN] Major upgrade advice
>>
>> Just to mention one issue we had here:
>>
>> In 8.1 we did this to retrieve all data from a specific date:
>> SELECT * FROM xxx
>> WHERE <timestamp_column> LIKE '2008-05-20%'
>>
>> In 8.3 we had to change to:
>> SELECT * FROM xxx
>> WHERE <timestamp_column> >= CAST('2008-05-20' as timestamp) AND
>>       <timestamp_column> < CAST('2008-05-21' as timestamp)
>>
>> Regards
>> Roberto Garcia
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> Roberto Garcia
> Banco de Dados, MSc
> Fone: (12) 3186-8405