David Shadovitz wrote:
> I'm looking for the fastest way to fetch a single record from a
> table. I don't care what record it is.
>
> Here are two techniques I've explored:
>
> 1. Use LIMIT
> SELECT * FROM myTable LIMIT 1
>
> 2. Get a valid OID and then get the record.
> SELECT MIN(oid) AS anOID FROM myTable
> SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE oid = anOID
>
> The 1st technique is slow. (I think PostgreSQL fetches all records
> and then returns just one.) The 2nd is faster, but not fast enough.
This is hard to believe. The first technique should be the fasted, but
might suffer from a bad plan. Please make sure that you have run
ANALYZE, and then post EXPLAIN ANALYZE output.