Re: How to use indexes for GROUP BY

On 01/24/2011 12:29 PM, Dimi Paun wrote:

> I want to simply get the latest "creationTS" for each location,
> but that seems to result in a full table scan:
>
> tts_server_db=# explain analyze select location, max(creationTS) from
> tagrecord group by location;

Try this, it *might* work:

select DISTINCT ON (location) location, creationTS
   from tagrecord
  order by location, creationTS DESC;

Secondly... Postgresql 8.1? Really? If at all possible, upgrade. There
is a lot you're missing from the last six years of PostgreSQL releases.
For instance, your MAX means a reverse index scan for each location,
which is far more expensive than an ordered index scan, so the planner
may be ignoring it, if the planner in 8.1 is even that intelligent.

If you were running 8.3, for instance, your index could be:

create index idx_tagdata_loc_creationTS on tagRecord(location,
creationTS DESC);

And then suddenly it just has to use the first match for that index for
each location. Older PG versions are... flaky when it comes to
optimization. I'm not sure if 8.1 used MAX as an internal construct or
treated it like a function. If it's the latter, it has to read every
value to find out which is the "max", which is why using ORDER BY *may*
fix your problem.

--
Shaun Thomas
OptionsHouse | 141 W. Jackson Blvd. | Suite 800 | Chicago IL, 60604
312-676-8870
sthomas@peak6.com

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