On Wednesday 14 March 2007 18:58, Frank Bax wrote: > A performance question should always include the output of EXPLAIN ANALYZE. > > I think the problem is database design. If you added a boolean column into > accounts table which would indicate owner/co-owner; then all data from > account_co_owner could be merged into accounts and the query would be much > simpler to code. > > I don't expect this code to be any quicker; but I think it more clearly > identifies the problem with your design: > > SELECT accounts.* from accounts > inner join > ( SELECT account.* FROM > ( select id,owner_id from accounts > union > select account_id,co_owner_id from account_co_owners > ) as account > INNER JOIN > ( SELECT id FROM people WHERE name LIKE '%user%' ) AS owner > on account.owner_id = owner.id > ) as acct on acct.id=accounts.id;
I can't say I really understand that query, but a union is not going to work, because account_co_owners is nothing more than a join-table, whereas accounts contains all the information belonging to an account. An account has one primary owner, indicated by the owner_id, and one or more co-owners, described by the account_co_owners table. Owners and co-owners are all of type people. I don't see anything wrong with this design. In the real word, an account is actually a transaction_account. This is the real query ('%KOE%' is the user supplied search string): SELECT DISTINCT ON (account.id) account.* FROM trade.transaction_accounts AS account INNER JOIN people.people AS owner ON owner.id = account.owner_id OR owner.id IN (SELECT co_owner_id FROM trade.transaction_account_co_owners WHERE account_id = account.id AND co_owner_id = owner.id) WHERE upper(account.description) LIKE '%KOE%' OR upper(owner.name) LIKE '%KOE%' OR upper(owner.familiar_name) LIKE '%KOE%' OR upper(owner.full_name) LIKE '%KOE%' I discovered that removing the subselect (the entire second condition of the join actually) is not the only thing that speeds it up. If I remove the LIKE check on account.description, it's also a lot faster (152 ms as opposed to 2915 ms), although not as fast as without the subselect. I don't understand why that makes such a big difference. There is an index on upper() on the field. This is the EXPLAIN ANALYZE output: Unique (cost=0.00..1061826.94 rows=800 width=551) (actual time=430.172..6492.619 rows=4 loops=1) -> Nested Loop (cost=0.00..1061644.80 rows=72856 width=551) (actual time=430.165..6492.585 rows=5 loops=1) Join Filter: (((upper(("outer".description)::text) ~~ '%KOE%'::text) OR (upper(("inner".name)::text) ~~ '%KOE%'::text) OR (upper(("inner".familiar_name)::text) ~~ '%KOE%'::text) OR (upper(("inner".full_name)::text) ~~ '%KOE%'::text)) AND (("inner".id = "outer".owner_id) OR (subplan))) -> Index Scan using transaction_accounts_pkey on transaction_accounts account (cost=0.00..36.80 rows=800 width=551) (actual time=0.014..3.717 rows=800 loops=1) -> Seq Scan on people "owner" (cost=0.00..54.08 rows=1208 width=1552) (actual time=0.002..2.541 rows=1208 loops=800) SubPlan -> Seq Scan on transaction_account_co_owners (cost=0.00..2.04 rows=1 width=4) (actual time=0.029..0.029 rows=0 loops=4796) Filter: ((account_id = $0) AND (co_owner_id = $1)) Total runtime: 6492.709 ms But, I can't really be asking you to fully analyze my query, unless you see something obvious that can be improved. My question was mainly general; if there is a better way than using subselects to join two tables which are only connected to eachother through a join-table (containing only references to the two tables in question). Subselects are usually very slow, aren't they? ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings