postgres not using index on SELECT COUNT(*) for a large table

Question

I have four tables; two for current data, two for archive data. One of the archive tables has tens of millions of rows. All tables have a couple narrow indexes and are very similar.

Given the following queries:

SELECT (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM A)
UNION SELECT (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM B)
UNION SELECT (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM C_LargeTable)
UNION SELECT (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM D);

A, B and D perform index scans. C_LargeTable uses a seq scan and the query takes about 20 seconds to execute. Table D has millions of rows as well, but is only about 10% of the size of C_LargeTable

If I then modify my query to execute using the following logic, which sufficiently narrows counts, I still get the same results, the index is used and the query takes about 5 seconds, or 1/4th of the time

...
SELECT (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM C_LargeTable WHERE idx_col < 'G') 
       + (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM C_LargeTable WHERE idx_col BETWEEN 'G' AND 'Q')
       + (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM C_LargeTable WHERE idx_col > 'Q')
...

It does not makes sense to me to have the I/O overhead of a full table scan for a count when perfectly good indexes exist and there is a covering primary key which would ensure uniqueness. My understanding of postgres is that a PRIMARY KEY isn't like a SQL Server clustering index in that it determines a sort, but it implicitly creates a btree index to ensure uniqueness, which I assume should require significantly less I/O than a full table scan.

Is this potentially an indication of an optimization that I may need to perform to organize data within C_LargeTable?

Answer 1

There isn't a covering index on the primary key because PostgreSQL doesn't support them (true up to and including 9.4 anyway).

The heap scan is required because of MVCC visibility. The index doesn't contain visibility information. Pg can do an index scan, but it still has to check visibility info from the heap, and with an index scan that'd be random I/O to read the whole table, so a seqscan will be much faster.

Make sure you run 9.2 or newer, and that autovacuum is configured to run frequently on the table. You should then be able to do an index-only scan where the visibility map is used. This only works under limited circumstances as Horse notes; see the wiki page on count and on index-only scans. If you aren't letting autovacuum run regularly enough the visibility map will be outdated and Pg won't be able to do an index-only scan.

In future, make sure you post explain or preferably explain analyze output with any queries.