WTF with hash index?

From: Олег Самойлов <splarv(at)ya(dot)ru>
To: "pgsql-generallists(dot)postgresql(dot)org" <pgsql-general(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: WTF with hash index?
Date: 2018-11-13 16:42:07
Message-ID: A841C4BC-A878-497E-AD9B-4DE0830DCC68@ya.ru
Views: Raw Message | Whole Thread | Download mbox | Resend email
Thread:
Lists: pgsql-general

CentOS 7

$ rpm -q postgresql10
postgresql10-10.6-1PGDG.rhel7.x86_64

SQL script for psql:

\set table_size 1000000
begin;
create table gender (gender varchar);

insert into gender (gender) select case when random<0.50 then 'female' when random<0.99 then 'male' else 'other' end from (select random() as random, generate_series(1,:table_size)) as subselect;

create index gender_btree on gender using btree (gender);
create index gender_hash on gender using hash (gender);
commit;
vacuum full analyze;

Vacuum full is not necessary here, just a little vodoo programming. I expected that the hash index will be much smaller and quicker than the btree index, because it doesn’t keep values inside itself, only hashes. But:

=> \d+
List of relations
Schema | Name | Type | Owner | Size | Description
--------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------------
public | gender | table | olleg | 35 MB |
(1 row)

=> \di+
List of relations
Schema | Name | Type | Owner | Table | Size | Description
--------+--------------+-------+-------+--------+-------+-------------
public | gender_btree | index | olleg | gender | 21 MB |
public | gender_hash | index | olleg | gender | 47 MB |
(2 rows)

The hash index not only is more than the btree index, but also is bigger than the table itself. What is wrong with the hash index?

Responses

Browse pgsql-general by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message Laurenz Albe 2018-11-13 17:55:49 Re: WTF with hash index?
Previous Message Ravi Krishna 2018-11-13 15:50:36 Re: Plpgsql search_path issue going from 9.3 to 9.6