Re: slow query performance - Mailing list pgsql-performance

From Matthew Wakeling
Subject Re: slow query performance
Date
Msg-id alpine.DEB.2.00.1006111434590.4083@aragorn.flymine.org
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: slow query performance  (Kenneth Marshall <ktm@rice.edu>)
List pgsql-performance
On Fri, 11 Jun 2010, Kenneth Marshall wrote:
> If you check the archives, you will see that this is not easy
> to do because of the effects of caching.

Indeed. If you were to take the value at completely face value, a modern
hard drive is capable of transferring sequential pages somewhere between
40 and 100 times faster than random pages, depending on the drive.

However, caches tend to favour index scans much more than sequential
scans, so using a value between 40 and 100 would discourage Postgres from
using indexes when they are really the most appropriate option.

Matthew

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