Philosophical question on primary keys
- From: <Jay.Miller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2009 12:09:06 -0400
We have a table with a primary key of message_id. This table is
occasionally queried on that column alone but most often on both the id
and a folder_id column (also numeric) with no other data being returned.
There are no foreign keys pointing to this primary key.
I'm trying to squeeze every last bit of performance out of one piece of
SQL that accounts 92% of all database i/o.
Using an index on message_id,folder_id reduces LIOs from 36 to 32 for a
typical query as opposed to using the primary key index on message_id.
The question is whether to create a new index or change the primary key
to include both columns.
Arguments against modifying primary key:
The primary key is just message_id, adding folder_id doesn't make it any
more unique. Also folder_id currently only exists in this table so if
for some unforeseen reason we someday need to point a foreign key to
this table this might cause a problem. No one thinks this will ever be
necessary but who knows what might happen in the future.
Arguments for modifying primary key:
One less index on the table means less overhead for inserts/updates.
One less index is less storage used. Also, I'm having trouble getting
the optimizer to use the second index in our test environment without
resorting to an index hint which I prefer to avoid.
Comments welcome. Thanks!
Here's the SQL in case anyone wants to take a look at it:
SELECT i.message_priority_cd, COUNT(*) AS count_label
FROM CLIENTMSG_ADMIN.message_instance i,
CLIENTMSG_ADMIN.message_transmission m,
CLIENTMSG_ADMIN.secure_inbox_message secure_inbox
WHERE i.message_id = secure_inbox.message_id
AND m.message_id = i.message_id
AND m.channel_cd = 'SECURE_INBOX'
AND i.account_nbr = :1
AND (m.delivery_status_cd = 'PENDING' OR m.delivery_status_cd
='DELIVERED')
AND m.message_read_ts IS NULL
AND m.delete_ts IS NULL
AND (i.expiration_ts > current_timestamp OR i.expiration_ts IS NULL)
AND secure_inbox.folder_id <> 3
AND secure_inbox.folder_id <> 2
GROUP BY i.message_priority_cd;
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