On Jun 1, 2007, at 11:48 , Tyler Durden wrote:
I'm having some problems in performance in a simple select count(id)
from....
Unrestricted count() (i.e., no WHERE clause) will perform a
sequential scan. If you're looking for faster ways to store table row
count information, please search the archives, as this has been
discussed many times before.
# explain select (id) from table_name;
-[ RECORD
1 ]----------------------------------------------------------------
QUERY PLAN | Seq Scan on table_name (cost=0.00..8601.30
rows=266730 width=4)
The query returns the id column value for each row in the table. The
fastest way to do this is visiting every row., i.e., a sequential
scan. Using an index would require (1) looking in the index and (2)
looking up the corresponding row.
Michael Glaesemann
grzm seespotcode net