Re: Dirty reads on index scan, - Mailing list pgsql-performance

From Koen De Groote
Subject Re: Dirty reads on index scan,
Date
Msg-id CAGbX52H71JjSakfFBQyFSuw+oPn30tNn-o-aKTOFh6Auob=HbA@mail.gmail.com
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In response to Re: Dirty reads on index scan,  (Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>)
Responses Re: Dirty reads on index scan,  (Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>)
Re: Dirty reads on index scan,  (Frits Hoogland <frits.hoogland@gmail.com>)
Re: Dirty reads on index scan,  (Jeff Janes <jeff.janes@gmail.com>)
List pgsql-performance
Alright.

So, if I want to speed up the query, apart from trying to vacuum it beforehand, I suspect I've hit the limit of what this query can do?

Because, the table is just going to keep growing. And it's a usually a query that runs one time per day, so it's a cold run each time.

Is this just going to get slower and slower and there's nothing that can be done about it?

Regards,
Koen De Groote



On Thu, Sep 21, 2023 at 9:30 PM Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at> wrote:
On Thu, 2023-09-21 at 17:05 +0200, Koen De Groote wrote:
> I'm doing the following query:
> select * from my_table where hasbeenchecked = true and hasbeenverified = true and insert_timestamp <= '2023-09-01 00:00:00.000' limit 1000;
>
> The date is an example, it is the format that is used in the query.
>
> The table has 81M rows. Is 50GB in size. And the index is 34MB
>
> The index is as follows:
> btree (insert_timestamp DESC) WHERE hasbeenchecked = true AND hasbeenverified = true
>
> I'm seeing a slow query first, then a fast one, and if I move the date, a slow query again.
>
> What I'm seeing is:
> Attempt 1:
> Hit: 5171(40MB)
> Read: 16571(130MB)
> Dirtied: 3940(31MB)
>
> Attempt 2:
> Hit: 21745 (170MB)
> Read: Nothing
> Dirtied: Nothing.
>
> It's slow once, then consistently fast, and then slow again if I move the date around.
> And by slow I mean: around 60 seconds. And fast is below 1 second.

That's normal behavior: after the first execution, the data are cached, so the query
becomes much faster.

Dirtying pages happens because the first reader has to set hint bits, which is an extra
chore.  You can avoid that if you VACUUM the table before you query it.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe

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