Re: How to use the BRIN index properly? - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Ron
Subject Re: How to use the BRIN index properly?
Date
Msg-id 7f0732ff-c739-3d42-a8e7-d9779f415f94@gmail.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: How to use the BRIN index properly?  (Siddharth Jain <siddhsql@gmail.com>)
List pgsql-general
1. The whole index does not need to fit in memory, just the parts of it you need at that time.
2. Partition the table by the primary key.  Each index will be much smaller, since each child will be smaller.

On 2/8/23 16:14, Siddharth Jain wrote:
OK so in that case we are left with the B-Tree index.

If the B-Tree index will be so large that it cannot fit in memory, then is it worth creating it at all? Are there any established patterns here?

On Wed, Feb 8, 2023 at 1:21 PM Christophe Pettus <xof@thebuild.com> wrote:


> On Feb 8, 2023, at 13:17, Siddharth Jain <siddhsql@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> As I explained in my question that is indeed our dilemma. Our insertion order will not be equal to index order. i.e., referring to your response:
>
> > who's data is added in the same order as the key in the BRIN index
>
> does NOT hold.

A BRIN index is not a good choice in this case.  You can CLUSTER the data on an index, but that's a one-time operation: PostgreSQL will not maintain that order after the CLUSTER.  If the number of rows in the table at the time of the CLUSTER is much larger than the number that are inserted between CLUSTER operations, then a BRIN index might be useful, but clustering a very large table is an expensive operation, and requires an exclusive lock on the table while it is being done.

--
Born in Arizona, moved to Babylonia.

pgsql-general by date:

Previous
From: Christophe Pettus
Date:
Subject: Re: How to use the BRIN index properly?
Next
From: Erik Wienhold
Date:
Subject: Re: How to create directory format backup