ISNULL performance tweaks

I have some existing code running in a production environment with
embedded SELECTs whose WHERE's use ISNULL tests on indexed foreign key
fields. This is obviously very slow.

My ISNULL *queries *take anywhere from 6 to 40 seconds. These queries
are used to generate reports to a device which times out at 20 seconds,
so half the time these devices don't get their reports, which makes my
customers VERY angry.

I recall seeing an email (I believe on this list) about how to improve
performance of ISNULL's with some sort of tweak or trick. However, I
can't find that email anywhere, and couldn't find it searching the
maillist archives.

So, until I have the time to code the fixes I need to prevent the use of
ISNULL, does anybody know how I can speed up this existing system?

Man, I wish PG indexed nulls! Is there any plan on adding these in the
future?

Thanks for any help you can give!

--
Matt Mello