Greg Stark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Note also that the index is only useful if the index is *being used*. And > index scans are much slower than sequential scans.
You miss my point entirely: an indexscan that hasn't got to retrieve any rows (because it has a constraint that points off the end of the index range) is extremely fast, and the planner will reliably detect that and use the index scan over a seqscan (assuming it has statistics showing the range of indexed values). And this decision is made separately for each child table, so the fact that a seqscan might be the best bet for the target partition doesn't stop the planner from using the indexscan in other partitions. However, Simon made a fair argument that there are useful cases where you don't need an index on a partitioning key, so my objection is answered. regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match