Change an index order from ascending to descending

Question

I have a table index in my postgres 9.6 db that I think would be more efficient if the table was sorted descending rather than ascending (as it currently is). The data that I want to test is not in full production use, but could potentially be accessed by users at any time, and I'd rather not take it down if I can avoid it. Two questions:

1. Is it possible to switch the index from ascending to descending on-the-fly?
2. If not, I guess I need to drop the index and re-create it. Obviously this will slow down search queries while there is no index. Is that the worst that will happen? Nothing will stop working entirely, right? As I understand it, it will get an exclusive lock on the table before dropping the index, right?

Apologies for the n00b question, I'm quite new to databases. Please be gentle with me!

Answer 1

If you dont want to lock table data you can use the clause CONCURRENTLY to drop the index an recreate it, this process is slower but avoids to lock access to the users.

DROP INDEX CONCURRENTLY my_index;
CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY my_index ON my_table (my_column DESC);

You can take a look at the postgres index documentation for more detailed information.