On Mon, Oct 23, 2006 at 04:54:00PM -0300, Mara Dalponte wrote: > Hello, > > I have a query with several join operations and applying the same > filter condition over each involved table. This condition is a complex > predicate over an indexed timestamp field, depending on some > parameters. > To factorize code, I wrote the filter into a plpgsql function, but > the resulting query is much more slower than the first one! A view would probably be a better idea... or create some code that generates the code for you. > The explain command over the original query gives the following info > for the WHERE clause that uses the filter: > > ... > Index Cond: ((_timestamp >= '2006-02-23 03:00:00'::timestamp without > time zone) AND (_timestamp <= '2006-02-27 20:00:00.989999'::timestamp > without time zone)) > ... > > The explain command for the WHERE clause using the filtering function is: > > ... > Filter: include_time_date('2006-02-23'::date, '2006-02-27'::date, > '03:00:00'::time without time zone, '20:00:00'::time without time > zone, (_timestamp)::timestamp without time zone) > ... > > It seems to not be using the index, and I think this is the reason of > the performance gap between both solutions. Well, it looks like include_time_date just returns a boolean, so how could it use the index? > How can I explicitly use this index? which type of functions shall I > use (VOLATILE | INMUTABLE | STABLE)? That depends on what exactly the function does. There's a pretty good description in the CREATE FUNCTION docs. -- Jim Nasby jim@xxxxxxxxx EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com 512.569.9461 (cell)