Holger Marzen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > But many users compain about PostgreSQL's poor count(*) performance,
I don't think that's relevant here. Some other DB's have shortcuts for determining the total number of rows in a single table, that is they can do "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM a_table" quickly, but David's query is messy enough that I can't believe anyone can actually do it without forming the join result. What I'd ask for is EXPLAIN ANALYZE output. Usually, if a complex query is slower than it should be, it's because the planner is picking a bad plan. So you need to look at how its estimates diverge from reality. But plain EXPLAIN doesn't show the reality, only the estimates ... David, could we see EXPLAIN ANALYZE for the query, and also the table schemas (psql \d displays would do)? Also, please take it to pgsql-performance, it's not really on-topic for pgsql-general. regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly