Using a DELETE
+ INSERT
pattern instead of also involving UPDATE
s can be highly problematic. IMO, it's an anti-pattern. In 99.9% of cases, it's better to use UPDATES
when possible.
Usually the DELETE
+ INSERT
pattern is implemented such that the subset of rows is blindly deleted in the target, which can create a tremendous amount of unnecessary write activity because the data is always re-written even if nothing changed.
Not only does this put load on the I/O subsystem, but it can also kill data access concurrency unless snapshot isolation is used (which will multiply the wasted disk write workload). If the default isolation level is used and the data is concurrently read, this pattern can produce deadlocks very readily and in large quantity.
Having said that, one needs to implement UPDATE
s carefully because they still have the potential to rewrite rows that haven't changed. Thankfully that's solved easily with a bit of extra code. All in all, it's well worth the effort to use UPDATE
s despite the slight added code complexity.
Depending on what you're doing, it may be easier and more reliable to send the entire desired state as a whole to the database using something like a table-valued parameter and sorting things out there instead of on the client side.
This can be improved in a thousand and one ways, then it should be a matter of milliseconds.
Better Queries
This is just your query reformatted with aliases and some noise removed to clear the fog:
SELECT count(DISTINCT t.id)
FROM tickets t
JOIN transactions tr ON tr.objectid = t.id
JOIN attachments a ON a.transactionid = tr.id
WHERE t.status <> 'deleted'
AND t.type = 'ticket'
AND t.effectiveid = t.id
AND tr.objecttype = 'RT::Ticket'
AND a.contentindex @@ plainto_tsquery('frobnicate');
Most of the problem with your query lies in the first two tables tickets
and transactions
, which are missing from the question. I'm filling in with educated guesses.
t.status
, t.objecttype
and tr.objecttype
should probably not be text
, but enum
or possibly some very small value referencing a look-up table.
EXISTS
semi-join
Assuming tickets.id
is the primary key, this rewritten form should be much cheaper:
SELECT count(*)
FROM tickets t
WHERE status <> 'deleted'
AND type = 'ticket'
AND effectiveid = id
AND EXISTS (
SELECT 1
FROM transactions tr
JOIN attachments a ON a.transactionid = tr.id
WHERE tr.objectid = t.id
AND tr.objecttype = 'RT::Ticket'
AND a.contentindex @@ plainto_tsquery('frobnicate')
);
Instead of multiplying rows with two 1:n joins, only to collapse multiple matches in the end with count(DISTINCT id)
, use an EXISTS
semi-join, which can stop looking further as soon as the first match is found and at the same time obsoletes the final DISTINCT
step. Per documentation:
The subquery will generally only be executed long enough to determine
whether at least one row is returned, not all the way to completion.
Effectiveness depends on how many transactions per ticket and attachments per transaction there are.
Determine order of joins with join_collapse_limit
If you know that your search term for attachments.contentindex
is very selective - more selective than other conditions in the query (which is probably the case for 'frobnicate', but not for 'problem'), you can force the sequence of joins. The query planner can hardly judge selectiveness of particular words, except for the most common ones. Per documentation:
join_collapse_limit
(integer
)
[...]
Because the query planner does not always choose the optimal
join order, advanced users can elect to temporarily set this variable
to 1, and then specify the join order they desire explicitly.
Use SET LOCAL
for the purpose to only set it for the current transaction.
BEGIN;
SET LOCAL join_collapse_limit = 1;
SELECT count(DISTINCT t.id)
FROM attachments a -- 1st
JOIN transactions tr ON tr.id = a.transactionid -- 2nd
JOIN tickets t ON t.id = tr.objectid -- 3rd
WHERE t.status <> 'deleted'
AND t.type = 'ticket'
AND t.effectiveid = t.id
AND tr.objecttype = 'RT::Ticket'
AND a.contentindex @@ plainto_tsquery('frobnicate');
ROLLBACK; -- or COMMIT;
The order of WHERE
conditions is always irrelevant. Only the order of joins is relevant here.
Or use a CTE like @jjanes explains in "Option 2". for a similar effect.
Indexes
B-tree indexes
Take all conditions on tickets
that are used identically with most queries and create a partial index on tickets
:
CREATE INDEX tickets_partial_idx
ON tickets(id)
WHERE status <> 'deleted'
AND type = 'ticket'
AND effectiveid = id;
If one of the conditions is variable, drop it from the WHERE
condition and prepend the column as index column instead.
Another one on transactions
:
CREATE INDEX transactions_partial_idx
ON transactions(objecttype, objectid, id)
The third column is just to enable index-only scans.
Also, since you have this composite index with two integer columns on attachments
:
"attachments3" btree (parent, transactionid)
This additional index is a complete waste, delete it:
"attachments1" btree (parent)
Details:
GIN index
Add transactionid
to your GIN index to make it a lot more effective. This may be another silver bullet, because it potentially allows index-only scans, eliminating visits to the big table completely.
You need additional operator classes provided by the additional module btree_gin
. Detailed instructions:
"contentindex_idx" gin (transactionid, contentindex)
4 bytes from an integer
column don't make the index much bigger. Also, fortunately for you, GIN indexes are different from B-tree indexes in a crucial aspect. Per documentation:
A multicolumn GIN index can be used with query conditions that involve
any subset of the index's columns. Unlike B-tree or GiST, index search
effectiveness is the same regardless of which index column(s) the
query conditions use.
Bold emphasis mine. So you just need the one (big and somewhat costly) GIN index.
Table definition
Move the integer not null columns
to the front. This has a couple of minor positive effects on storage and performance. Saves 4 - 8 bytes per row in this case.
Table "public.attachments"
Column | Type | Modifiers
-----------------+-----------------------------+------------------------------
id | integer | not null default nextval('...
transactionid | integer | not null
parent | integer | not null default 0
creator | integer | not null default 0 -- !
created | timestamp | -- !
messageid | character varying(160) |
subject | character varying(255) |
filename | character varying(255) |
contenttype | character varying(80) |
contentencoding | character varying(80) |
content | text |
headers | text |
contentindex | tsvector |
Best Answer
Create an index on
(item_id, event_time)
.It will jump to the specified item_id, jump to the specified event_time for that item_id, and then move back one. No sorting involved.