Since BRIN indexes have been introduced in PostgreSQL 9.5, many people have gladly adopted this new index type. A lot has been written about this new feature and a lot of positive feedback has been reported. While BRIN indexes are clearly a success and definitely a win, some people tend to exaggerate and use them far too frequently.
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BRIN indexes are cheap, but this does not mean that they are always beneficial. In case the correlation of a column is low, BRIN indexes can be no gain or even a small loss.
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test=# CREATE TABLE t_test AS SELECT * FROM generate_series(1, 1000000) AS id; SELECT 1000000 Time: 422.647 ms test=# VACUUM ANALYZE t_test; VACUUM Time: 144.370 ms |
We generate a PostgreSQL table containing 1 million lines.
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test=# SELECT count(*) FROM t_test WHERE id = 533455; count ------- 1 (1 row) Time: 44.555 ms |
The sequential scan takes around 44 ms and returns exactly one row.
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test=# CREATE INDEX idx_brin ON t_test USING brin(id); CREATE INDEX Time: 148.036 ms test=# SELECT count(*) FROM t_test WHERE id = 533455; count ------- 1 (1 row) Time: 2.983 ms |
In this case, the scan is a lot faster and completes within around 3 ms. That's pretty nice.
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test=# explain analyze SELECT count(*) FROM t_test WHERE id = 533455; QUERY PLAN ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Aggregate (cost=16.02..16.03 rows=1 width=8) (actual time=2.514..2.514 rows=1 loops=1) Bitmap Heap Scan on t_test (cost=12.01..16.02 rows=1 width=0) (actual time=1.228..2.511 rows=1 loops=1) Recheck Cond: (id = 533455) Rows Removed by Index Recheck: 28927 Heap Blocks: lossy=128 Bitmap Index Scan on idx_brin (cost=0.00..12.01 rows=1 width=0) (actual time=0.029..0.029 rows=1280 loops=1) Index Cond: (id = 533455) Planning time: 0.059 ms Execution time: 2.541 ms (9 rows) |
As you can see, PostgreSQL does a bitmap scan to fetch the data. The number of blocks read is 128 (exactly the desired number of blocks).
However, the situation is quite different in case correlation goes down. Remember: A normal BRIN index calculates the minimum and the maximum value in a range of 128 blocks. In case data is sorted the index performs nicely because many 128 x 8k areas can be excluded from the scan.
The situation changes dramatically if the data is shuffled (= correlation is low). In this case, a chunk of 128 blocks (= 1 MB) will most likely contain a value close to the absolute minimum and the absolute maximum of the column.
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test=# CREATE TABLE t_random AS SELECT * FROM t_test ORDER BY random(); SELECT 1000000 Time: 1321.911 ms test=# VACUUM ANALYZE t_random ; VACUUM Time: 146.827 ms test=# CREATE INDEX idx_brin_random ON t_random USING brin(id); CREATE INDEX Time: 140.131 ms |
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test=# explain analyze SELECT count(*) FROM t_random WHERE id = 533455; QUERY PLAN -------------------------------------------------------------------- Aggregate (cost=16.02..16.03 rows=1 width=8) (actual time=86.122..86.122 rows=1 loops=1) Bitmap Heap Scan on t_random (cost=12.01..16.02 rows=1 width=0) (actual time=73.613..86.117 rows=1 loops=1) Recheck Cond: (id = 533455) Rows Removed by Index Recheck: 999999 Heap Blocks: lossy=4425 Bitmap Index Scan on idx_brin_random (cost=0.00..12.01 rows=1 width=0) (actual time=0.314..0.314 rows=44800 loops=1) Index Cond: (id = 533455) Planning time: 0.102 ms Execution time: 86.173 ms (9 rows) Time: 86.621 ms |
In this example, the query runtime skyrockets. So does the number of blocks needed.
BRIN indexes are only effective if a column is somewhat “sorted”. In many cases, this happens naturally. However, it is certainly not always the case.
In case you need any assistance, please feel free to contact us.
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Yeah, I'm looking at adding some BRIN indexes to the Slony replication schema. In particular... https://github.com/cbbrowne/slony1-engine/commit/7a02c20cde8c8f3a54914ca6889d392074d51503
I put them onto tables that largely get only INSERTs, on columns whose values generally correlate with activity. e.g. - sequence values that are continuously being incremented, transaction IDs that are continuously being incremented. These are likely to be good cases for BRIN, but thus far, that's just a guess.
BRIN ought to be great for tables that are the result of ETL processes, where data is added in an organized order, and where old data doesn't go with great frequency.