Think Like A Postgres, Part 2: Indexes

Robert Treat

You’re learning more about Postgres but struggling to find solid materials that cover deeper topics like how database design and on-disk structures affect day to day performance. You’re not trying to be an internals hacker, but you know that understanding the internals makes a big difference when it comes to troubleshooting query problems. Indexes are a necessary part of any DBA toolset, but because of the way Postgres implements MVCC, people often misunderstand the trade-offs involved in working with indexes in Postgres. In this talk we’ll focus on how Postgres handles indexes and talk about common misunderstandings both in how indexes work and in what problems they are able to solve.