3

I'm trying to create an index that will support queries that use my custom operator. This is on PostgreSQL 10.4.

The custom operator

I followed the tips in this SO answer to create an operator that performs "LIKE" style matching on elements in an text ARRAY.

CREATE FUNCTION reverse_like (text, text) returns boolean language sql 
as $$ select $2 like $1 $$;
    
CREATE OPERATOR <~~ ( function =reverse_like, leftarg = text, rightarg=text );

The above operator allows me to do things like

SELECT 'ab%' <~~ ANY('{"abc","def"}');

The schema, index and query

I have a table with web traffic visits called sessions which includes an array column.

CREATE TABLE sessions
(
   session_id    varchar(24) NOT NULL,
   first_seen    timestamp,
   domains       varchar[]
);

To query the domains column to see if a given domain (or partial/ wildcarded domain name) was visited I can do the following:

SELECT count(*)
FROM session_4070ba14_f081_41cb_9ef7_9dd385934da7
WHERE 'www.foo%' <~~ ANY(domains);

I want to speed up the above queries with GIN index. So I created the index as follows:

CREATE INDEX idx_domains ON session USING GIN(domains);

The Question

After running analyze on the table and a set enable_seqscan = false; I have no luck getting Postgres to employ this index. It's always doing a seqscan. It uses the above index of array operators like @> but not for my custom <~~ operator.

I think its because the GIN index doesn't know how to handle my custom operator - so do I need to create an operator class and then create my index using that? Or do I create a functional index?

1
  • Are you looking for trigram support, or just prefix matching?
    – jjanes
    Sep 6, 2019 at 1:27

3 Answers 3

1

For trigram support, you can try the parray_gin extension

WHERE domains @@> ARRAY['www.foo%'];

If you just want to do prefix matching (more efficiently than that provided by trigram), I don't think there is any way you can do that without writing some C code to glue the pieces together. I think you would then work on the array type directly, so wouldn't need the ANY, and so wouldn't benefit from the reverse_like operator at all.

0

You won't be able to index an expression like this at all:

<constant> <operator> ANY(<array column>)

Your only chance would be to define an operator such that your expression looks like:

<array column> <operator> <constant>

But writing a GIN operator class means writing an extension in C, and I don't think you want to go that far.

The easy solution would be to change your data model so that you don't use arrays for things like that.

0

Turns out I over complicated this by thinking about a GIN index. A b-tree index on the whole array works fine and supports the custom <~~ operator.


CREATE INDEX IF NOT EXISTS idx_domains2 ON session(domains );

select count(*)
from session
where 'www.foo%' <~~ ANY(domains);

Finalize Aggregate  (cost=331523.11..331523.12 rows=1 width=8)
  ->  Gather  (cost=331522.90..331523.11 rows=2 width=8)
        Workers Planned: 2
        ->  Partial Aggregate  (cost=330522.90..330522.91 rows=1 width=8)
              ->  Parallel Index Only Scan using idx_domains2 on session  (cost=0.42..330200.52 rows=128952 width=0)
                    Filter: ('www.foo%'::text <~~ ANY ((domains)::text[]))
1
  • This is remarkable, but also misleading. The btree index is used because it's smaller than the table, so the index-only scan is faster than a sequential scan on the table. The performance gain is limited, though, and diminished if index-only scans are not possible. And the index is not used in its capacity as index. A non-selective condition like WHERE domains IS NOT NULL will be faster (still "using" the index) than a very selective condition like WHERE 'www.foo12345%' <~~ ANY(domains)! IOW, the index is barely supporting your custom operator as requested. Feb 25, 2021 at 14:38

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