Re: Sequential Scan with LIMIT

From: "Jim C(dot) Nasby" <decibel(at)decibel(dot)org>
To: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
Cc: John Meinel <john(at)johnmeinel(dot)com>, pgsql-performance(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: Sequential Scan with LIMIT
Date: 2004-10-28 23:46:58
Message-ID: 20041028234658.GI55164@decibel.org
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On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 04:11:53PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> But the LIMIT will cut the cost of the seqscan case too. Given the
> numbers you posit above, about one row in five will have 'myval', so a
> seqscan can reasonably expect to hit the first matching row in the first
> page of the table. This is still cheaper than doing an index scan
> (which must require reading at least one index page plus at least one
> table page).
>
> The test case you are showing is probably suffering from nonrandom
> placement of this particular data value; which is something that the
> statistics we keep are too crude to detect.

Isn't that exactly what pg_stats.correlation is?
--
Jim C. Nasby, Database Consultant decibel(at)decibel(dot)org
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