henk de wit <henk53602@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > The plan looks like this: > "Result (cost=3D0.37..0.38 rows=3D1 width=3D0) (actual time=3D184231.636..= > 184231.638 rows=3D1 loops=3D1)" > " InitPlan" > " -> Limit (cost=3D0.00..0.37 rows=3D1 width=3D8) (actual time=3D18423= > 1.620..184231.622 rows=3D1 loops=3D1)" > " -> Index Scan Backward using trans_payment_id_index on transact= > ions (cost=3D0.00..19144690.58 rows=3D51122691 width=3D8) (actual time=3D1= > 84231.613..184231.613 rows=3D1 loops=3D1)" > " Filter: (payment_id IS NOT NULL)" > "Total runtime: 184231.755 ms" The only way I can see for that to be so slow is if you have a very large number of rows where payment_id is null --- is that the case? There's not a lot you could do about that in existing releases :-(. In 8.3 it'll be possible to declare the index as NULLS FIRST, which moves the performance problem from the max end to the min end ... > select min(time) from transactions where payment_id =3D 67 > There are indexes on both the time (a timestamp with time zone) and payment= > _id (a bigint) columns. Creating indexes at random with no thought about how the system could use them is not a recipe for speeding up your queries. What you'd need to make this query fast is a double-column index on (payment_id, time) so that a forward scan on the items with payment_id = 67 would immediately find the minimum time entry. Neither of the single-column indexes offers any way to find the desired entry without scanning over lots of unrelated entries. regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq