Hello Tom! Tom Lane wrote: > > Reiner Dassing <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > explain select * from wetter order by epoche desc; > > NOTICE: QUERY PLAN: > > > Index Scan Backward using wetter_epoche_idx on wetter > > (cost=0.00..3216018.59 rows=20340000 width=16) > > > explain select * from wetter where epoche between '1970-01-01' and > > '1980-01-01' order by epoche asc; > > NOTICE: QUERY PLAN: > > > Sort (cost=480705.74..480705.74 rows=203400 width=16) > > -> Seq Scan on wetter (cost=0.00..454852.00 rows=203400 width=16) > > It's hard to believe that you've done a VACUUM ANALYZE on this table, > since you are getting a selectivity estimate of exactly 0.01, which > just happens to be the default selectivity estimate for range queries. > How many rows are there really in this date range? > Well, I did not claim that i made a VACUUM ANALYZE, I just set up a new table for testing purposes doing just INSERTs.
After VACUUM ANALYSE the results look like: explain select * from wetter where epoche between '1970-01-01' and test_wetter-# '1980-01-01' order by epoche asc; NOTICE: QUERY PLAN: Index Scan using wetter_epoche_idx on wetter (cost=0.00..3313780.74 rows=20319660 width=16) EXPLAIN Now, the INDEX Scan is used and therefore, the query is very fast, as expected. For me, as a user not being involved in all the intrinsics of PostgreSQL, the question was "Why is this SELECT so slow?" (this question is asked a lot of times in this Mail lists) Now, I would like to say thank you! You have explained me and hopefully many more users what is going on behind the scene. > Anyway, the reason the planner is picking a seqscan+sort is that it > thinks that will be faster than an indexscan. It's not necessarily > wrong. Have you compared the explain output and actual timings both > ways? (Use "set enable_seqscan to off" to force it to pick an indexscan > for testing purposes.) > > regards, tom lane -- Mit freundlichen Gruessen / With best regards Reiner Dassing ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send "unregister YourEmailAddressHere" to [EMAIL PROTECTED])