Re: Efficiently searching for the most recent rows where a columnmatches any result from a different query

Hello,

I have the following schema:

    CREATE TABLE users (

        id   BIGSERIAL PRIMARY KEY,

        name TEXT      NOT NULL UNIQUE

    );

    

    CREATE TABLE friends (

        user_id        BIGINT NOT NULL REFERENCES users,

        friend_user_id BIGINT NOT NULL REFERENCES users,

        UNIQUE (user_id, friend_user_id)

    );

    

    CREATE TABLE posts (

        id      BIGSERIAL PRIMARY KEY,

        user_id BIGINT    NOT NULL REFERENCES users,

        content TEXT      NOT NULL

    );

    CREATE INDEX posts_user_id_id_index ON posts(user_id, id);

Each user can unilaterally follow any number of friends. The posts table has a large number of rows and is rapidly growing.

My goal is to retrieve the 10 most recent posts of a user's friends. This query gives the correct result, but is inefficient:

    SELECT posts.id, users.name, posts.content

    FROM posts JOIN users ON posts.user_id = users.id

    WHERE posts.user_id IN (SELECT friend_user_id FROM friends WHERE user_id = 1)

    ORDER BY posts.id DESC LIMIT 10;

If the user's friends have recently posted, the query is still reasonably fast (https://explain.depesz.com/s/6ykR). But if the user's friends haven't recently posted or the user has no friends, it quickly deteriorates (https://explain.depesz.com/s/OnoG).

If I match only a single post author (e.g. WHERE posts.user_id = 5), Postgres uses the index posts_user_id_id_index. But if I use IN, the index doesn't appear to be used at all.

How can I get these results more efficiently?

I've uploaded the schema and the queries I've tried to dbfiddle at http://dbfiddle.uk/?rdbms=postgres_9.6&fiddle=cf1489b7f6d53c3fe0b55ed7ccbad1f0. The output of "SELECT version()" is "PostgreSQL 9.6.5 on x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc (Debian 4.9.2-10) 4.9.2, 64-bit" for me.

Thank you in advance for any insights, pointers or suggestions you are able to give me.

Regards,

Milo