I have a big table ~15M records called entities. I want to find top 5 entities matching "hockey" in their name. I have a Full text index built for that, which is used : gin_ix_entity_full_text_search_name, which indexes the name. Query SELECT "entities".*, ts_rank(to_tsvector('english', "entities"."name"::text), to_tsquery('english', 'hockey'::text)) AS "rank0.48661998202865475" FROM "entities" WHERE "entities"."place" = 'f' AND (to_tsvector('english', "entities"."name"::text) @@ to_tsquery('english', 'hockey'::text)) ORDER BY "rank0.48661998202865475" DESC LIMIT 5 Duration 25,623 ms QUERY PLAN Limit (cost=4447.28..4447.29 rows=5 width=3116) (actual time=18509.274..18509.282 rows=5 loops=1) -> Sort (cost=4447.28..4448.41 rows=2248 width=3116) (actual time=18509.271..18509.273 rows=5 loops=1) Sort Key: (ts_rank(to_tsvector('english'::regconfig, (name)::text), '''hockey'''::tsquery)) Sort Method: top-N heapsort Memory: 19kB -> Bitmap Heap Scan on entities (cost=43.31..4439.82 rows=2248 width=3116) (actual time=119.003..18491.408 rows=2533 loops=1) Recheck Cond: (to_tsvector('english'::regconfig, (name)::text) @@ '''hockey'''::tsquery) Filter: (NOT place) -> Bitmap Index Scan on gin_ix_entity_full_text_search_name (cost=0.00..43.20 rows=2266 width=0) (actual time=74.093..74.093 rows=2593 loops=1) Index Cond: (to_tsvector('english'::regconfig, (name)::text) @@ '''hockey'''::tsquery) Total runtime: 18509.381 ms (10 rows) Is it because of my boolean condition (not Place?) If so, I should add it to my index and I should get a very fast query? Or is it the sorting condition which makes it very long? Thanks helping me understand the Query plan and how to fix my 25 seconds query! Here are my DB parameters . It is an online DB hosted by Heroku, on Amazon services. They describe it as having 1.7GB of ram, 1 processing unit and a DB of max 1TB. name | current_setting version | PostgreSQL 9.0.7 on i486-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC gcc-4.4.real (Ubuntu 4.4.3-4ubuntu5) 4.4.3, 32-bit archive_command | test -f /etc/postgresql/9.0/main/wal-e.d/ARCHIVING_OFF || envdir /etc/postgresql/9.0/resource29857_heroku_com/wal-e.d/env wal-e wal-push %p archive_mode | on archive_timeout | 1min checkpoint_completion_target | 0.7 checkpoint_segments | 40 client_min_messages | notice cpu_index_tuple_cost | 0.001 cpu_operator_cost | 0.0005 cpu_tuple_cost | 0.003 effective_cache_size | 1530000kB hot_standby | on lc_collate | en_US.UTF-8 lc_ctype | en_US.UTF-8 listen_addresses | * log_checkpoints | on log_destination | syslog log_line_prefix | %u [YELLOW] log_min_duration_statement | 50ms log_min_messages | notice logging_collector | on maintenance_work_mem | 64MB max_connections | 500 max_prepared_transactions | 500 max_stack_depth | 2MB max_standby_archive_delay | -1 max_standby_streaming_delay | -1 max_wal_senders | 10 port | random_page_cost | 2 server_encoding | UTF8 shared_buffers | 415MB ssl | on syslog_ident | resource29857_heroku_com TimeZone | UTC wal_buffers | 8MB wal_keep_segments | 127 wal_level | hot_standby work_mem | 100MB (39 rows) I tried playing with the work_mem, setting it as high as 1.5GB, with no success. I believe it is heroku reading speed that is abysmal in this case. But I'd like to confirm that. Or is it the function that I'm calling in my SELECT clause? Thanks for help Also posted on http://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/16437/postgresql-help-optimizing-sql-performance-full-text-search -- View this message in context: http://postgresql.1045698.n5.nabble.com/PostgreSQL-Help-Optimizing-performance-full-text-search-on-Heroku-tp5638777p5638777.html Sent from the PostgreSQL - performance mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance