Dear Postgres Community,

I'm running postgres 8.3

I have a table, partitioned by month

-- Table: datadump

-- DROP TABLE datadump;

CREATE TABLE datadump
(
  sys_timestamp timestamp without time zone,
  sys_device_id integer,
  usefields integer,
  timedate timestamp without time zone,
  digitalthermometer1 integer,
  digitalthermometer2 integer,
  digitalthermometer3 integer,
  digitalthermometer4 integer,
  digitalthermometer5 integer,
  digitalthermometer6 integer,
  tco0 integer,
  tco1 integer,
  tco2 integer,
  tco3 integer
)
WITH (
  OIDS=FALSE
)
TABLESPACE disk_d;
ALTER TABLE datadump OWNER TO postgres;
GRANT ALL ON TABLE datadump TO postgres;

partitioned by timedate, example:

CREATE TABLE data_dmp_part_201036
(
{inherits from master table}
 CONSTRAINT data_dmp_part_201036_timedate_check CHECK (timedate >= '2010-09-06 
00:00:00'::timestamp without time zone AND timedate < '2010-09-13 
00:00:00'::timestamp without time zone)
)
INHERITS (datadump)
WITH (
  OIDS=FALSE
);
ALTER TABLE data_dmp_part_201036 OWNER TO postgres;

partitions are will typically have from 200k to 300k rows, i have 52 partitions 
per year and I'm keeping around 4-5 years of history. However, they will query 
last 3-4 months most often.

my first, pretty obvious choice, was to create index on partitions on timedate:
CREATE INDEX data_dmp_part_201036_idx
  ON data_dmp_part_201036
  USING btree
  (timedate);


Most of my queries will have where conditions on timedate and sys_device_id, 
but a lot of them will have additional clause: where usefields is not null. 
Some of the queries will be limited on timedate only.

I'm trying to figure out the best indexing strategy for this table. If a query 
will have condition on sys_device_id and/or usefields is not null, postgres 
won't use my index. 
I've experimented turning on and off enable_seqscan and creating different 
indexes and so far btree index on (usefields, sys_device_id, timedate) turn out 
to be the best. 
If I create btree index only on (usefields, timedate) or (sys_device_id, 
timedate), planner will go for seqscan. If I turn off seqscan, postgres will 
use index but performance will be worse than seqscan.


My question finally: is btree index on (usefields, sys_device_id, timedate) 
really the best choice? I'm yet to examine options of creating separate indexes 
for timedate, usefields and sys_device_id. Possibly I should try using GiST or 
GIN?

Any advice, please?

Regards,
foo



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