An old greybeard COBOL programmer would say that a critical *OLTP* table should *only* be accessed via one index (customer_id, sale_id, PK, etc), and there should be as few indices as possible on the table. The DBA would then partition based on that index. Any reports should be run from a separate table which is populated from the OLTP table. (This is why reporting databases and their big brothers "data warehouses" were developed: so you aren't querying the whole critical OLTP table.)
In your case, right now, my first DBA task would be to ensure that the table is regularly vacuumed and analyzed. On Wed, Nov 26, 2025 at 11:29 AM atma ram <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Laurenz, > > Thank you for your reply. > > The table size is 1.6TB and not GB. My bad. > > The queries using primary key or partition key will be > definitely improved. My question is 20 queries that do not use partition > key and use only index. Since this is a critical OLTP system, even if there > is a slight chance that those 20 queries will degrade performance, then we > may not go with partition and find any alternative ways. Hence the > question. > > We can do a POC and find out. But wanted to check if there are any > existing benchmarking, explanations or details available before we do POC. > Is it worth it? > > Thanks, > Atma > > On Wed, Nov 26, 2025 at 9:05 PM Laurenz Albe <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> On Wed, 2025-11-26 at 18:50 +0530, atma ram wrote: >> > We have a table that is approximately 1.6 GB in size. Query performance >> has started to degrade. >> > Although we have multiple indexes, the large table size is still >> causing performance issues. >> >> 1.6 GB is too small for partitioning. >> >> > We are planning to partition the table on the primary key. This is an >> OLTP system, and there >> > are around 100 queries that access this table. About 80 of these >> queries use the primary key >> > and will therefore benefit directly from the partition key once we >> implement partitioning. >> >> If a table uses the primary key, I cannot see how it could cause >> performance issues. >> >> I expect that these queries will become slightly *slower* if you >> partition the table, >> because of the overhead of partition pruning. >> >> > However, the remaining 20 queries do not use the primary key; they rely >> on other indexed columns. >> > Our question is: after partitioning the table, and after creating the >> necessary indexes on >> > each partition, what happens to the performance of those 20 queries >> that do not use the partition key? >> > – Will their performance degrade? >> >> Very likely yes, though perhaps only slightly. >> >> > – Will it remain the same as before partitioning? >> > – Is there any chance it will improve? >> >> That is unlikely, but possible, for example if the query can choose a >> faster sequential >> scan on some partitions, instead of a slower index scan on the whole >> table. >> >> > Is there any benchmarking, documentation, or reference material that >> can help demonstrate >> > how partitioning will affect the performance of the 20 queries that do >> not use the partition key? >> > This information is critical for us before proceeding with the >> partitioning strategy. >> >> The only good way to tell is to implement it on a test database and try >> it. >> >> But as I said initially, with a 1.6 GB table patritioning is pointless. >> >> Examine the performance bottleneck with EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS) and >> try to improve >> your queries. >> >> Yours, >> Laurenz Albe >> > -- Death to <Redacted>, and butter sauce. Don't boil me, I'm still alive. <Redacted> lobster!
