[Apologies if this already went through. I don't see it in the archives.] Normally one expects that an index scan would have a startup time of nearly zero. Can anyone explain this: EXPLAIN ANALYZE select activity_id from activity where state in (10000, 10001) order by activity_id limit 100; QUERY PLAN Limit (cost=0.00..622.72 rows=100 width=8) (actual time=207356.054..207356.876 rows=100 loops=1) -> Index Scan using activity_pk on activity (cost=0.00..40717259.91 rows=6538650 width=8) (actual time=207356.050..207356.722 rows=100 loops=1) Filter: ((state = 10000) OR (state = 10001)) Total runtime: 207357.000 ms The table has seen VACUUM FULL and REINDEX before this. The plan choice and the statistics look right, but why does it take 3 minutes before doing anything? Or is the measurement of the actual start time inaccurate? This is quite reproducible, so it's not just a case of a temporary I/O bottleneck, say. (PostgreSQL 8.0.3) -- Peter Eisentraut http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/