Re: LIKE search and performance

mark(at)mark(dot)mielke(dot)cc wrote:
>> And since it's basically impossible to know the selectivity of this kind
>> of where condition, I doubt the planner would ever realistically want to
>> choose that plan anyway because of its poor worst-case behavior.
>
> What is a real life example where an intelligent and researched
> database application would issue a like or ilike query as their
> primary condition in a situation where they expected very high
> selectivity?
>
> Avoiding a poor worst-case behaviour for a worst-case behaviour that
> won't happen doesn't seem practical.

But if you are also filtering on e.g. date, and that has an index with
good selectivity, you're never going to use the text index anyway are
you? If you've only got a dozen rows to check against, might as well
just read them in.

The only time it's worth considering the behaviour at all is *if* the
worst-case is possible.

--
Richard Huxton
Archonet Ltd