Re: select distinct and index usage

Alban Hertroys wrote
> Something that might help you, but I'm not sure whether it 
> might hurt  
> the performance of other queries, is to cluster that table on  
> val_datestamp_idx. That way the records are already (mostly) sorted  
> on disk in the order of the datestamps, which seems to be the brunt  
> of above query plan.

I've a question about this suggestion, in relation to what the cost estimation calculation does, or could possibly do:
If there are 4000 distinct values in the index, found randomly amongst 75 million rows, then you might be able to check the visibility of all those index values through reading a smaller number of disk pages than if the table was clustered by that index.
As an example, say there are 50 rows per page, at a minimum you could be very lucky and determine that they where all visible through reading only 80 data pages. More likely you'd be able to determine that through a few hundred pages. If the table was clustered by an index on that field, you'd have to read 4000 pages.

Is this question completely unrelated to PostgreSQL implementation reality, or something worth considering?

Regards,
Stephen Denne.

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