Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 07:07:22 -0500
From: Bruno Wolff III <bruno@wolff.to>
To: Marco Vezzoli <marco.vezzoli@st.com>
Cc: pgsql-sql@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: multiple index search with postgres7.1.3 on solaris 8
Message-ID: <20030612120722.GB1285@wolff.to>
Mail-Followup-To: Marco Vezzoli <marco.vezzoli@st.com>,
	pgsql-sql@postgresql.org
References: <3EE8621D.F6A261AE@st.com>
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On Thu, Jun 12, 2003 at 13:21:01 +0200,
  Marco Vezzoli <marco.vezzoli@st.com> wrote:
> Hi everybody,
> I'm sorry if this topic has already been explained, but the search
> engine at archives.postgresql.org shows me 10 pages of results but
> without any link (!).
> I'm using postgres 7.1.3 on Solaris 8; I would like to do some query of
> this form
> 
> SELECT * FROM table WHERE (attribute1,attribute2) IN
> ((value1_0,value2_0),(value1_1,value2_1) ...)
> 
> (which is legal on oracle 8i on solaris 8).
> I know this has an equivalent boolean expression but:
> -I would like to use an index defined like
>  CREATE INDEX myindex ON table(attribute1,attribute2)
> -the pairs in the list can be many (up to 100)

or'ing IN terms together is probably going to result in the same plan that
you are describing above (assuming table has a large enough number
of rows). I don't know if this way of writing the query can generate
a sort of values you are checking against and then a merge join.
For just a hundred or so values I don't think this plan would be that
much better than both nest loop and multiple index scans. However, if
you want to get that plan and or'ing INs won't generate it, then you could
try union'ing the values together in the IN value list. 7.4 will likely
behave differently than pre 7.4 versions.