If the problem is the sort, use UNION ALL. As for the query restructuring, I don't know if there is a way of restructuring the query to do it in a single query. You would be able to contruct a query plan that would do it, something like:
-> Nested Loop
-> Append
-> Index Scan on big_table.y1
-> Index Scan on big_table.y2
-> Index Scan on little_table
But I have no idea how to get PostgreSQL to produce this...
On Sat, Oct 16, 2004 at 01:23:09AM -0400, Mike Mascari wrote:
> Hello. I have a query like:
>
> SELECT big_table.*
> FROM little_table, big_table
> WHERE little_table.x = 10 AND
> little_table.y IN (big_table.y1, big_table.y2);
>
> I have indexes on both big_table.y1 and big_table.y2 and on
> little_table.x and little_table.y. The result is a sequential scan of
> big_table. In order to prevent this, I've rewritten the query as:
>
> SELECT big_table.*
> FROM little_table, big_table
> WHERE little_table.x = 10 AND
> little_table.y = big_table.y1
> UNION
> SELECT big_table.*
> FROM little_table, big_table
> WHERE little_table.x = 10 AND
> little_table.y = big_table.y2
>
> which does allow an index scan, but suffers from two separate queries
> along with a unique sort, which, from the data, represents 90% of the
> tuples returned by both queries.
>
> Is there any way to write the first query such that indexes will be used?
>
> Mike Mascari
>
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--
Martijn van Oosterhout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://svana.org/kleptog/
> Patent. n. Genius is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration. A patent is a
> tool for doing 5% of the work and then sitting around waiting for someone
> else to do the other 95% so you can sue them.
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