Owens

Owens

Ecto Postgres Index vs Unique Index

Hello all,

Does anyone know if you create a unique_index in postgres for two fields on a table, does that mean you DON’T need to create an additional index on those two tables?

e.g.

  1. create unique_index(:projects, [:organization_id, :name])

means you DON’T need to do create index(:projects, [:organization_id])

  1. create unique_index(:team_users, [:team_id, :user_id])

means you DON’T need to do

create index(:teams_users, [:team_id])
create index(:teams_users, [:user_id])

AND if you already setup those indexes before the unique_indexes, should you drop/delete those indexes before migrating the unique_indexes?

Marked As Solved

amnu3387

amnu3387

From what I understood from this (Multicolumn indexes pg 9.6 (but same up to 12) the indexes can be used when the query involves columns from the index, going from the left to right.

In this case the second index on organization_id doesn’t give you anything extra since the leftmost column of the unique index you created before, is that same column.

Here you wouldn’t need a team_id index, but you would need a user_id if you are planning on querying the teams_users table solely by user_id (without team_id that is).
The team_id being the leftmost column declared on the unique_index would be used when a query containing a team_id column is made.

Theoretically this applies to indexes with more than 2 columns too.
E.g.

unique index on a, b, c
Means that pg can use the index on a query containing:
a
a,b
and a,b,c

(though it still goes through the planner ofc, so it might not use it, but that wouldn’t be because it can’t, at least this is my reading from the docs, it also means that the order in which you declare the columns for the index plays a role too)

Also Liked

benwilson512

benwilson512

Author of Craft GraphQL APIs in Elixir with Absinthe

Unique constraints will create a unique index in the background anyway, it’s the only way to enforce the constraint in a performant manner.

Basically, create unique indices to enforce uniqueness rules. Also, create indices to reflect query patterns. If those two reasons to create indices happen to overlap, great! But it isn’t a big deal if they don’t, and they’re both perfectly valid reasons to create an index.

benwilson512

benwilson512

Author of Craft GraphQL APIs in Elixir with Absinthe

As far as I can tell there isn’t any practical difference, however I think from a clarity perspective it is better to use constraints to enforce uniqueness. Just know that you don’t need to make an index for it, one will be created already.

benwilson512

benwilson512

Author of Craft GraphQL APIs in Elixir with Absinthe

It does not mean that. The index will only be used if you query both of those fields. If you query only one of them, it cannot use that index. If you plan to query the table by those fields individually then you also want indices on those fields.

Last Post!

sorentwo

sorentwo

Oban Core Team

As noted above, you can use one or more parts of a compound index, from the left to the right. It can be a fantastic space and performance saving tool. In fact, that’s why Oban only declares two indexes for all of the standard operations.

Here is the “biggest” one, which composes 5 fields:

https://github.com/sorentwo/oban/blob/master/lib/oban/migrations.ex#L417

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