Hi, I am running a query which makes a join on 3 tables: - generals (contains 200 000 rows) - category_generals (contains 200 000 rows) - generals_topics (contains 15 000 000 rows) The query is wrote this way: SELECT gt.id_topic FROM generals g, category_generals cs, generals_topics gt WHERE g.media = 't' AND g.id_general = cg.id_general AND gt.id_general = g.id_general AND cg.id_category = 15 ORDER BY gt.id_topic DESC OFFSET 0 LIMIT 20; The column id_general of table generals is a primary key. All the other columns used to make the joins are indexes. The query is slow but it works fine as it completes in less than 1 second. The problem is that if I change the filter value of id_category from 15 to 3 the query will take more than 7 minutes to complete! The only difference between id_category 3 and 15 is that there is about 4000 rows in the first one (id_category = 3) and 2000 rows in the second one (id_category = 15). An explain give me the following result: QUERY PLAN --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Limit (cost=0.00..9677.68 rows=20 width=4) -> Nested Loop (cost=0.00..61006657.19 rows=126077 width=4) -> Nested Loop (cost=0.00..59991538.61 rows=252145 width=12) -> Index Scan Backward using generals_topics_pkey on generals_topics gt (cost=0.00..615679.86 rows=14750423 width=8) -> Index Scan using ix_category_generals_id_general on category_generals cs (cost=0.00..4.01 rows=1 width=4) Index Cond: ("outer".id_general = cs.id_general) Filter: (id_category = 3) -> Index Scan using generals_id_topic_key on generals g (cost=0.00..4.01 rows=1 width=4) Index Cond: (g.id_general = "outer".id_general) Filter: media As you can see, every rows of generals_topics table is scanned and I don't understand why? How can I do to make postgresql to work only with the tuples resulting from the join conditions? Is it a configuration problem ? Thanks in advance for any help. -- Olivier Sirven Elma Ingénierie Informatique 3, rue d'Uzès F-75002 - Paris - France http://www.elma.fr Tel: +33-1-44882744 Fax: +33-1-44882747 Email: olivier@xxxxxxx