In response to Kenneth Marshall : > > > How many rows do you have in your table? If there are relatively few, > > > it probably guesses it to be cheaper to do a sequential scan and > > > calculate lower values on-the-fly rather than bother with the index. > > > > That's one reason, an other reason, i think, is, that a btree-index can't > > search with an 'not like' - operator. > > The 'not like' condition is likely to be extremely non-selective > which would cause a sequential scan to be used in any event whether > or not an index could be used. That's true, but i have an example where the 'not like' condition is extremely selective: ,----[ sql ] | test=*# select count(1) from words where lower(w) not like lower('f%'); | count | ------- | 10 | (1 row) | | test=*# select count(1) from words where lower(w) like lower('f%'); | count | ------- | 10000 | (1 row) `---- But the index can't use: ,----[ code ] | test=*# explain select * from words where lower(w) not like lower('f%'); | QUERY PLAN | ---------------------------------------------------------- | Seq Scan on words (cost=0.00..4396.15 rows=10 width=47) | Filter: (lower(w) !~~ 'f%'::text) | (2 rows) `---- And i think, the reason is: ,----[ quote from docu ] | B-trees can handle equality and range queries on data that can be sorted | into some ordering. In particular, the PostgreSQL query planner will | consider using a B-tree index whenever an indexed column is involved in | a comparison using one of these operators: | | < | <= | = | >= | > `---- Regards, Andreas -- Andreas Kretschmer Kontakt: Heynitz: 035242/47150, D1: 0160/7141639 (mehr: -> Header) GnuPG: 0x31720C99, 1006 CCB4 A326 1D42 6431 2EB0 389D 1DC2 3172 0C99 -- Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance