Hello, I am running a select on a large table with two where conditions. Explain analyze shows that the estimated number of rows returned (190760) is much more than the actual rows returned (58221), which is probably the underlying cause for the poor performance I am seeing. Can someone please tell me how to improve the query planner estimate? I did try vacuum analyze. Here are some details: Explain plan: unison@csb-test=> explain analyze select * from paliasorigin a where a.origin_id=20 and a.tax_id=9606; QUERY PLAN -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bitmap Heap Scan on paliasorigin a (cost=4901.38..431029.54 rows=190760 width=118) (actual time=12.447..112.902 rows=58221 loops=1) Recheck Cond: ((origin_id = 20) AND (tax_id = 9606)) -> Bitmap Index Scan on paliasorigin_search3_idx (cost=0.00..4853.69 rows=190760 width=0) (actual time=11.407..11.407 rows=58221 loops=1) Index Cond: ((origin_id = 20) AND (tax_id = 9606)) Schema: unison@csb-test=> \d+ paliasorigin Column | Type | Modifiers | -----------+--------------------------+------------ palias_id | integer | not null origin_id | integer | not null alias | text | not null descr | text | tax_id | integer | added | timestamp with time zone | not null default timenow() Indexes: "palias_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (palias_id) "paliasorigin_alias_unique_in_origin_idx" UNIQUE, btree (origin_id, alias) "paliasorigin_alias_casefold_idx" btree (upper(alias)) CLUSTER "paliasorigin_alias_idx" btree (alias) "paliasorigin_o_idx" btree (origin_id) "paliasorigin_search1_idx" btree (palias_id, origin_id) "paliasorigin_search3_idx" btree (origin_id, tax_id, palias_id) "paliasorigin_tax_id_idx" btree (tax_id) Foreign-key constraints: "origin_id_exists" FOREIGN KEY (origin_id) REFERENCES origin(origin_id) ON UPDATE CASCADE ON DELETE CASCADE Has OIDs: no Number of rows: unison@csb-test=> select count(*) from paliasorigin; count ---------- 37909009 (1 row) Pg version: unison@csb-test=> select version(); version -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PostgreSQL 8.3.3 on x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC gcc (GCC) 4.1.0 (SUSE Linux) (1 row) Info from analyze verbose: unison@csb-test=> analyze verbose paliasorigin; INFO: analyzing "unison.paliasorigin" INFO: "paliasorigin": scanned 300000 of 692947 pages, containing 16409041 live rows and 0 dead rows; 300000 rows in sample, 37901986 estimated total rows ANALYZE Time: 21999.506 ms Thank you, -Kiran Mukhyala