From: Richard Huxton <dev@archonet.com>
To: Gunther Mayer <gunther.mayer@googlemail.com>
Cc: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Exact index overhead
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:00:14 +0100
Message-ID: <48071FAE.1070408@archonet.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <48071807.8000409@gmail.com>
References: <48071807.8000409@gmail.com>
Gunther Mayer wrote:
> You see, all updates change most of the data fields but never ever touch
> the time field. Assuming correct and efficient behaviour of postgresql
> it should then also never touch the time index and incur zero overhead
> in its presence, but is this really the case? If it somehow does update
> the index too even though the value hasn't changed by some weird
> implementation detail I'd rather not have that index and live with slow
> queries for the few times a day that reporting is run.
Well, until 8.3 PG does indeed update the index. That's because with
MVCC an update is basically a delete+insert, so you'll end up with two
versions (the V in MVCC) of the row.
With 8.3 there's a new feature called HOT which means updates that don't
change an index can be more efficient.
So - if you are running 8.3, I'd say try the index and see what
difference it makes.
--
Richard Huxton
Archonet Ltd
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To: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Cc: dev@archonet.com, gunther.mayer@googlemail.com
Subject: Re: Exact index overhead
In-Reply-To: <48071FAE.1070408@archonet.com>
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