Re: 7.4 - FK constraint performance

Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: ow <oneway_111@yahoo.com>
Cc: pgsql-sql@postgresql.org
Date: 2004-02-13T00:42:58Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers, pgsql-sql
ow <oneway_111@yahoo.com> writes:
> schemaname	tablename	attname	null_frac	avg_width	n_distinct	most_common_vals
> most_common_freqs	histogram_bounds	correlation
> my	large	small_id	0	4	10	{7,3,5,1,4,2,8,10,6,9}
> {0.108667,0.105,0.104333,0.101333,0.100667,0.0983333,0.0983333,0.0983333,0.094,0.091}
> 	0.0597573

According to this entry, your small_id column only contains the ten
values 1..10, roughly evenly distributed.  So why are you probing for
239??

The planner is certainly going to estimate a probe for an unspecified
value as retrieving 10% of the table, and under that assumption it's
quite right to use a seqscan.

If this estimate is not right, perhaps you could give us a more accurate
view of the column statistics?

			regards, tom lane