Re: identifying duplicates in table with redundancies

>
> Hallo Andreas,
> I reduced the problem to the innermost query:
>
> 1) SELECT DISTINCT trainer_id, trainer_name FROM student
> This results in a sequential table scan. Execution time 7500ms.
>
> 2) I created an INDEX ON (trainer_id, trainer_name). Then I had an index
> scan instead, which still cost 7000ms.
>
> 3) Next, I changed from DISTINCT to GROUP BY:
> SELECT trainer_id, trainer_name FROM student
> GROUP BY trainer_id, trainer_name
> This resulted in an index scan @ 6750ms
>
> 4) I filtered out NULL trainer_ids
> WHERE trainer_id IS NOT NULL
> Amazingly, this resulted in a sequential table scan, which only took
> 1300ms!!
>
> Please, explain (pun not intended)! How can this be. Only 11000/250000
> rows have a null trainer_id.
>

That's an impressive improvement...
Personally I have no idea what caused it, specially when you say it was 
sequential :-|
Warmed caches ?

Best,
Oliver