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To: Ryszard Kurek <rychu@sky.pl>
cc: pgsql-interfaces@postgreSQL.org
Subject: Re: [INTERFACES] Table viewer for big sorted tables 
In-reply-to: Your message of Sat, 16 Oct 1999 21:02:15 +0200
	<19991016210215.A4354@fnet.pl>
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 16:20:30 -0400
Message-ID: <9459.940105230@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

Ryszard Kurek <rychu@sky.pl> writes:
> The slow version is:
> SELECT min(product_symbol) FROM products WHERE product_name > 'current_product';

Try

SELECT ... FROM products WHERE product_name > 'current_product' ORDER BY product_name LIMIT 1;

You will need to have an index on product_name to make this fast ---
without the index there will be a sort step.

The ideal solution to your problem is probably

SELECT ... FROM products ORDER BY product_name LIMIT 1 OFFSET n;

which avoids issues like what happens when there is more than one row
with the same product_name.  However, 6.5.* is not bright enough to
use an index for this kind of query (it only considers an index if
there is a matching WHERE clause).  7.0 will be smarter.

			regards, tom lane