@merlin, @kevin: Thank you both -- I'll try your suggestions as soon as I get back to the mothership. @kevin: I hear you. (I'm deeply steeped in Ruby on Rails and foolishly assume that it's easy to read.) With that in mind: \d user_associations Table "public.user_associations" Column | Type | Modifiers -------------+-----------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------- id | integer | not null default nextval('followings_id_seq'::regclass) leader_id | integer | follower_id | integer | created_at | timestamp without time zone | not null updated_at | timestamp without time zone | not null Indexes: "followings_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (id) "index_followings_on_leader_id_and_follower_id" UNIQUE, btree (leader_id, follower_id) "index_followings_on_follower_id" btree (follower_id) "index_followings_on_leader_id" btree (leader_id) -- Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance