On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 15:03 +0900, Hyun-Sung, Jang wrote:
>
> < lots of information about seq scan vs index scan >
>
Hi,
Just because it has an ID that is the largest in the set, does not mean
it will be at the last position in the on-disk tables. And similarly,
the lowest numbered ID does not mean it will be at the beginning in the
on-disk structures.
So when you 'LIMIT 1' the sequential scan stops as soon as it has found
the first row that matches, but in the no LIMIT case with a sequential
scan it will continue the scan to the end of the on-disk data.
Given that this column is unique, PostgreSQL could optimise this case
and imply LIMIT 1 for all sequential scans on such criteria, but in the
real world the optimisation is usually going to come from an index - at
least it will for larger tables - since that's a component of how
PostgreSQL is enforcing the unique constraint.
Regards,
Andrew McMillan.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew @ Catalyst .Net .NZ Ltd, PO Box 11-053, Manners St, Wellington
WEB: http://catalyst.net.nz/ PHYS: Level 2, 150-154 Willis St
DDI: +64(4)803-2201 MOB: +64(272)DEBIAN OFFICE: +64(4)499-2267
Chicken Little only has to be right once.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------