Re: Index not being used - Mailing list pgsql-general

On 8/13/07, Ralph Smith <smithrn@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Aug 13, 2007, at 4:39 PM, Scott Marlowe wrote:
>
> On 8/13/07, Ralph Smith <smithrn@u.washington.edu> wrote:
> I'm confused.  Shouldn't this index be used?
> (It's running on v7.4.7)
>
> airburst=> \d stats2
>              Table "public.stats2"
>   Column   |         Type          | Modifiers
> -----------+-----------------------+-----------
>  lab       | character varying(30) |
>  name      | character varying(50) |
>  status    | character varying(40) |
>  eventtime | integer               |
>  username  | character varying(30) |
>  pkey      | character varying(60) |
> Indexes:
>     "stats2_etime_index" btree (eventtime)
>
> airburst=> \d stats2_etime_index
> Index "public.stats2_etime_index"
>   Column   |  Type
> -----------+---------
>  eventtime | integer
> btree, for table "public.stats2"
>
> airburst=> explain select count(*) from stats2 where eventtime > 1167638400
> ;
>                               QUERY PLAN
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>  Aggregate  (cost=185247.97..185247.97 rows=1 width=0)
>    ->  Seq Scan on stats2  (cost=0.00..179622.45 rows=2250205 width=0)
>          Filter: (eventtime > 1167638400)
> (3 rows)
>
>
> ======================================================================
>
>
> =====================================================================
> That really depends.  how many rows are actually returned?  If it's
> 2250205 like the query planner thinks, and that's a fair chunk of the
> table, then no, it shouldn't use an index, a seq scan will be faster.
> What does explain analyze select ... say?
> ======================================================================
> Somewhere between 40,000 and 48,000 rows returned the index kicks in.
> Out of a table of 7 million rows, that's a fairly common count I have to
> work with.
> It's the amount of activity since August 2nd, this year; NOT that long ago.
>
> Any suggestions on speeding up these queries, other than using more and more
> tables, thus ruling out the reasonable use of command-line queries?
>
> Ultimately we'll move to some datawarehousing solution, but that's not a
> 'tomorrow' kind of thing...

Hmmmm.  Not sure you answered my question about the explain analyze output.

Note that select count(*) from table is NEVER going to fast in
PostgreSQL compared to MySQL with MyIsam tables, just because of the
difference in design.  The same kind of problem exists for MySQL with
innodb tables.  It's a FAQ, you can find lots of info on it by
searching this forum or reading the FAQ.  Basically it's a question of
visibility.  No matter whether or not the data are in the index, the
db has to look at the table to see if the row is visible.

Oh good night, I just noticed you're running 7.4.7.  Two things.  1:
IMMEDIATELY UPDATE to 7.4.17 or whatever the latest 7.4 series is.
That's easy, you don't have to dump and restore the db for that.  2:
Start planning to upgrade to 8.2.4 now.  7.4 is getting old fast, and
I've found a lot of queries that run much faster (factors faster) in
8.2.4 than they did in 7.4.

That said, that probably won't help on this query a lot.  select
count(*) is expensive.

We can look at how big your shared_buffers are, your work_mem, and a
few others in postgresql.conf.  Make sure your stats are up to date,
and you might have to increase stats target for that field in your
database (see alter table alter column...)

Let us know what explain analyze says.