You may try to change the planner's opinion using sub queries. Something like: select * from eventactivity, (select * from keyword_incidents, eventmain, eventgeo where eventmain.incidentid = keyword_incidents.incidentid and eventgeo.incidentid = keyword_incidents.incidentid and ( recordtext like '%JOSE CHAVEZ%' ) )foo where eventactivity.incidentid = foo.incidentid order by foo.entrydate limit 10000; HTH, Marc -----Original Message----- From: pgsql-performance-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:pgsql-performance-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Dan Harris Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2007 4:22 AM To: PostgreSQL Performance Subject: [PERFORM] Planner doing seqscan before indexed join 8.0.3 - Linux 2.6.18.. Freshly vacuumed and analyzed This database has been humming along fine for a while now, but I've got one of those sticky queries that is taking much too long to finish. After some digging, I've found that the planner is choosing to apply a necessary seq scan to the table. Unfortunately, it's scanning the whole table, when it seems that it could have joined it to a smaller table first and reduce the amount of rows it would have to scan dramatically ( 70 million to about 5,000 ). The table "eventactivity" has about 70million rows in it, index on "incidentid" The table "keyword_incidents" is a temporary table and has incidentid as its primary key. It contains 5125 rows. eventmain and eventgeo both have 2.1 million. My hope is that I can convince the planner to do the join to keyword_incidents *first* and then do the seq scan for the LIKE condition. Instead, it seems that it's seqscanning the whole 70 million rows first and then doing the join, which takes a lot longer than I'd like to wait for it. Or, maybe I'm misreading the explain output? Thanks again -Dan --------------------------------- Here's the query: explain analyze select * from keyword_incidents, eventactivity, eventmain, eventgeo where eventmain.incidentid = keyword_incidents.incidentid and eventgeo.incidentid = keyword_incidents.incidentid and eventactivity.incidentid = keyword_incidents.incidentid and ( recordtext like '%JOSE CHAVEZ%' ) order by eventmain.entrydate limit 10000; ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------- Limit (cost=2388918.07..2388918.08 rows=1 width=455) (actual time=81771.186..81771.292 rows=26 loops=1) -> Sort (cost=2388918.07..2388918.08 rows=1 width=455) (actual time=81771.180..81771.215 rows=26 loops=1) Sort Key: eventmain.entrydate -> Nested Loop (cost=0.00..2388918.06 rows=1 width=455) (actual time=357.389..81770.982 rows=26 loops=1) -> Nested Loop (cost=0.00..2388913.27 rows=1 width=230) (actual time=357.292..81767.385 rows=26 loops=1) -> Nested Loop (cost=0.00..2388909.33 rows=1 width=122) (actual time=357.226..81764.501 rows=26 loops=1) -> Seq Scan on eventactivity (cost=0.00..2388874.46 rows=7 width=84) (actual time=357.147..81762.582 rows=27 loops=1) Filter: ((recordtext)::text ~~ '%JOSE CHAVEZ%'::text) -> Index Scan using keyword_incidentid_pkey on keyword_incidents (cost=0.00..4.97 rows=1 width=38) (actual time=0.034..0.036 rows=1 loops=27) Index Cond: (("outer".incidentid)::text = (keyword_incidents.incidentid)::text) -> Index Scan using eventgeo_incidentid_idx on eventgeo (cost=0.00..3.93 rows=1 width=108) (actual time=0.076..0.081 rows=1 loops=26) Index Cond: (("outer".incidentid)::text = (eventgeo.incidentid)::text) -> Index Scan using eventmain_incidentid_idx on eventmain (cost=0.00..4.78 rows=1 width=225) (actual time=0.069..0.075 rows=1 loops=26) Index Cond: (("outer".incidentid)::text = (eventmain.incidentid)::text) Total runtime: 81771.529 ms (15 rows) ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend