Composite index planner issues Was: Re: Constraint exclusion oddity with composite index

Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>> "Joshua D. Drake" <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com> writes:
>>> Tom Lane wrote:
>>>> "Joshua D. Drake" <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com> writes:
>>>>> Assume the following:
>>>>> index on: (id, adate)
>>>>> constraint CHECK(adate > '01-01-2007' AND adate < '04-01-2007');
>>>>> The planner will not use the index listed above.
>>>> For what?
>>
>>> select adate from parent where adate = '01-25-2007'
>>
>> That's unsurprising. Searching with only a lower-order index column
>> value seldom wins, 'cause you've got to scan the entire index. The
>> constraint is irrelevant to this.
>
> I guess where I got confused is:
>
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/indexes-multicolumn.html
>
> And explicitly:
>
> A multicolumn B-tree index can be used with query conditions that
> involve any subset of the index's columns, but the index is most
> efficient when there are constraints on the leading (leftmost) columns.

Considering the paragraph from the documentation above, should we change
the documentation?

Joshua D. Drake

>
> Sincerely,
>
> Joshua D. Drake
>
>
>>
>> regards, tom lane
>>
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>
>