Re: PG8.2.1 choosing slow seqscan over idx scan

Thanks Tom! Reducing random_page_cost to 2 did the trick for this
query. It now favors the index scan.

Even if this is a cached situation, I wouldn't expect a difference of 3
min vs 3 seconds.

Even if unrelated, do you think disk fragmentation would have negative
effects? Is it worth trying to defragment the drive on a regular basis
in Windows?

Jeremy Haile

On Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:39:07 -0500, "Tom Lane" <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> said:
> "Jeremy Haile" <jhaile(at)fastmail(dot)fm> writes:
> > Running PostgreSQL 8.2.1 on Win32. The query planner is choosing a seq
> > scan over index scan even though index scan is faster (as shown by
> > disabling seqscan). Table is recently analyzed and row count estimates
> > seem to be in the ballpark.
>
> Try reducing random_page_cost a bit. Keep in mind that you are probably
> measuring a fully-cached situation here, if you repeated the test case.
> If your database fits into memory reasonably well then that's fine and
> you want to optimize for that case ... but otherwise you may find
> yourself pessimizing the actual behavior.
>
> regards, tom lane