Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > ... Your real problem is that > you're using the information_schema which has to do all sorts of extra > work for standards compliance. If you don't need that you're going to > be much better off just using the system catalogs. To put that in some perspective: regression=> create table fooey(f1 int); CREATE TABLE regression=> \timing Timing is on. regression=> select column_name from information_schema.columns where table_nam e = 'fooey'; column_name ------------- f1 (1 row) Time: 84.388 ms regression=> select attname from pg_attribute where attrelid = 'fooey'::regclas s and attnum > 0 and not attisdropped; attname --------- f1 (1 row) Time: 7.834 ms regression=> When you look at the plans involved (information_schema.columns is an 8-way join) the surprising thing is not that the first query is so slow, it's that it's so fast. regards, tom lane
