Re: order by index, and inheritance

From: Michiel Meeuwissen <Michiel(dot)Meeuwissen(at)omroep(dot)nl>
To: Rod Taylor <pg(at)rbt(dot)ca>
Cc: performance(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: order by index, and inheritance
Date: 2004-04-22 14:40:23
Message-ID: 20040422144023.GI6870@michiel.omroep.nl
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Rod Taylor <pg(at)rbt(dot)ca> wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-04-22 at 07:02, Michiel Meeuwissen wrote:
> > Rod Taylor <pg(at)rbt(dot)ca> wrote:
> > > The scan is picking the best method for grabbing everything within the
> > > table, since it is not aware that we do not require everything.
> >
> > Hmm. That is a bit silly. Why does it use the index if select only from
> > mm_mediasources?
> >
> > > You can explicitly tell it what you want to do via:
> > >
> > > SELECT *
> > > FROM (SELECT * FROM mm_mediasources ORDER BY number DESC LIMIT 20
> > > UNION SELECT * FROM <subtable> ORDER BY number DESC LIMIT 20) AS tab
> > > ORDER BY number DESC LIMIT 20
> >
> > I think you meant 'only mm_mediasources', and btw order by and limit are not
> > accepted before union, so the above query does not compile.
>
> Yes, I did mean only. Try putting another set of brackets around the
> selects to get ORDER BY, etc. accepted. You can add another layer of
> subselects in the from if that doesn't work.

Ok, I can get it working:

select number,url
from ( select number,url from (select number,url from only mm_mediasources order by number desc limit 20) as A
union select number,url from (select number,url from mm_audiosources order by number desc limit 20) as B
union select number,url from (select number,url from mm_videosources order by number desc limit 20) as C
) as TAB order by number desc limit 20;

This indeeds performs good (about 10000 times faster then select number,url
from mm_mediasources order by number desc limit 20) . But hardly beautiful,
and quite useless too because of course I am now going to want to use an
offset (limit 20 offset 20, you see..), which seems more or less impossible
in this way, isn't it.

select number,url
from ( select number,url from (select number,url from only mm_mediasources order by number desc limit 100020) as A
union select number,url from (select number,url from mm_audiosources order by number desc limit 100020) as B
union select number,url from (select number,url from mm_videosources order by number desc limit 100020) as C
) as TAB order by number desc limit 20 offset 100000;

This would be it, I think, but this performs, expectedly, quit bad again,
though still 5 times faster then select url,number from mm_mediasources order by number desc limit 20 offset 100000;

I'm thinking of dropping inheritance all together and using foreign keys or
so for the extra fields, to simulate inheritance. That might perhaps work a whole lot better?

Thanks anyway,

--
Michiel Meeuwissen
Mediapark C101 Hilversum
+31 (0)35 6772979
nl_NL eo_XX en_US
mihxil'
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