On Sat, Aug 20, 2005 at 11:08:13PM +1000, Gavin Sherry wrote: > Of course. The idea is that, generally speaking, you're only interested in > a small portion of the data stored in the table. Indexes store extra data > so that they can locate the portion you're interested in faster.
I think his question was more why you needed the data in itself, when you had everything you needed in the index anyway. (Actually, you don't -- indexes don't carry MVCC information, but I guess that's a bit beside the point.) There has been discussion on "heap tables" or whatever you'd want to call them (ie. tables that are organized as a B+-tree on some index) here before; I guess the archives would be a reasonable place to start looking. /* Steinar */ -- Homepage: http://www.sesse.net/ ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq
