Re: Complete row is fetched ?

Satish Burnwal (sburnwal) wrote:
> I have a ques - say I have a table that has 10 columns. But in a simple
> select query from that table, I use just 3 columns. I want to know
> whether even for fetching 3 columns, read happens for all the 10 columns
> and out of that the required 3 columns are returned ? ie Does the
> complete row with all the 10 columns are fetched even though I need just
> 3 columns ? OR only 3 columns are fetched ?
>

yes and no.

a row can consist of both a proper tuple in an 8K block, and toast data
stored in toast tables.    the whole block that the tuple is in will be
read into the shared_buffers space, however, toast data thats not
referenced will not be fetched.   toast is used for larger fields that
won't fit in a single block.

for more info on toast, see
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/storage-toast.html