Re: index creation on 7.3

On Tue, 2007-01-09 at 23:12, Tom Lane wrote:
> Scott Marlowe <smarlowe@g2switchworks.com> writes:
> > On Tue, 2007-01-09 at 17:17, Ben wrote:
> > If I create an index on a table that needs to be vacuumed in 7.3, will the
> > dead rows get indexed as well?
>
> > Yes.  I think.  I'm pretty sure that's still true in 8.2. as well.  The
> > way indexes work is that the index points to the oldest version of a
> > tuple in existence, said tuple which then points to the next newer
> > version and so on.
>
> IIRC, CREATE INDEX will ignore tuples that are "definitely dead", ie,
> too old to be visible to any open transaction.  It *will* (and must)
> index tuples that are recently dead but might still be visible to some
> open transaction.

So, it depends on one's definition of dead...

I don't want to go on the cart...