On Sat, 31 May 2003, Dave E Martin XXIII wrote: > select next_id from unique_ids where name=whatever for update; > update unique_ids set next_id=next_id+1 where name=whatever; > pass on value of old next_id to other code... > > where unique_ids is: > > create table unique_ids ( > name text not null, > next_id bigint not null > ) without oids; > > Currently this table has one row in it, where name is 15 unicode > characters long. It would seem that there would be no need for an index > on name. However, doing: > > create index unique_ids__name on unique_ids(name); > > resulted in literally an order-of-magnatude increase in the speed of the > application. (it went from 10-20 seconds to handle approximately 30 > records, to 1/2-3/4 second, and this was the only change). Presumably I > would have never discovered this had I remembered to declare name as a > primary key, which would have created the index. Experimenting around, > and doing a vacuum full without the index didn't make any difference (I > suspected that perhaps seq_scan had to go through a bunch of "dead" > records). For some reason, postgresql is significantly slower doing the > sequential scan than the index (I checked with explain and it is using > the index when its present) in spite of there only being one row.
It may be just be a question of plan choice, but we'd need to see explain analyze output to really make a reasonable guess. ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send "unregister YourEmailAddressHere" to [EMAIL PROTECTED])