Re: [GENERAL] Query is not using index when it should

"Steinar H. Gunderson" <sgunderson(at)bigfoot(dot)com> writes:

> On Sat, Dec 11, 2004 at 03:17:13PM +0100, Tomas Skäre wrote:
> > select c.* from cjm_object c
> > inner join
> > (select max(timestamp) as timestamp,objectid,field from cjm_object
> > group by objectid,field) t
> > using(timestamp,objectid,field)
> > where 1=1 and data is not null
> > order by objectid,field;
>
> Usually, SELECT max(field) FROM table is better written in PostgreSQL as
> SELECT field FROM table ORDER field DESC LIMIT 1.

Well, my subquery doesn't return just one row, but one for each
objectid,field combination in the table. I could rewrite it to
something like this:

select c.* from cjm_object c
where exists (select timestamp from cjm_object t
where c.objectid=t.objectid
and c.field=t.field
order by timestamp desc limit 1)
and data is not null
order by objectid;

But that seems to be even slower, even if it can use an index scan in
the subquery. Also it doesn't give the same result set, but I haven't
looked into what's wrong yet.

> I don't see the point of "where 1=1", though...

It's just because the actual query is generated by a program, and it's
easier to always have "where 1=1" and then add optional conditions
with "and ...".

Tomas