Re: a question for the way-back machine

On Wed, 13 Dec 2006, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:

>> - 7.3 isn't smart enough to use an index on an insert? Seems unlikely.
>
> This question makes no sense, you don't need an index to insert.

Wouldn't it need to check the unique constraint (an index on the table) 
before the insert can succeed? It seems like it would be better to check 
the index than to do a full table scan to try to satisfy that constraint.

> Are you sure it's not due to some foreign key check?

No, but it seems unlikely, given that the vast majority of activity is 
inserts into a single table, and that this table has massive amounts of 
sequential scans according to pg_stat_user_tables.

> BTW, seperate inserts is the worst way to load data. At least put them
> within a single transaction, or use COPY.

Oh, I know. It's not my choice, and not (yet) changeable.