strange query plan

Mario Weilguni <mweilguni@sime.com>

From: Mario Weilguni <mweilguni@sime.com>
To: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Date: 2001-04-08T08:35:00Z
Lists: pgsql-general
I've a table containing some sort of logs, the table layout ist:
 Attribute |           Type           |               Modifier
-----------+--------------------------+---------------------------------------
 id        | integer                  | not null default nextval('ids'::text)
 serverid  | integer                  | not null
 ts        | timestamp with time zone | default now()
 log       | character varying(400)   | not null
Indices: i1,
         log_pkey

primary key is id, and there is an additional index on serverid. The table 
contains ~ 1.4 mio of rows, I've used "vacuum analyze".

Now when I type:
explain select min(id)from log;
NOTICE:  QUERY PLAN:

Aggregate  (cost=45702.20..45702.20 rows=1 width=4)
  ->  Seq Scan on log  (cost=0.00..41978.36 rows=1489536 width=4)

I don't understand why the index log_pkey is not used here. I guess it would 
be much cheaper to consult the index to get min(), max(), sum() and avg() 
instead of sequentially scanning ~500MB of data.

Any idea?

Thanks

Best regards,
	Mario Weilguni


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 Mario Weilguni                               KPNQwest Austria GmbH
 Senior Engineer Web Solutions                         Nikolaiplatz 4
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