Using Mongo: should we create an index tailored to each type of high-volume query? - mongodb

We have two types of high-volume queries. One looks for docs involving 5 attributes: a date (lte), a value stored in an array, a value stored in a second array, one integer (gte), and one float (gte).
The second includes these five attributes plus two more.
Should we create two compound indices, one for each query? Assume each attribute has a high cardinality.
If we do, because each query involves multiple arrays, it doesn't seem like we can create an index because of Mongo's restriction. How do people structure their Mongo databases in this case?
We're using MongoMapper.
Thanks!

Indexes for queries after the first ranges in the query the value of the additional index fields drops significantly.
Conceptually, I find it best to think of the addition fields in the index pruning ever smaller sub-trees from the query. The first range chops off a large branch, the second a smaller, the third smaller, etc. My general rule of thumb is only the first range from the query in the index is of value.
The caveat to that rule is that additional fields in the index can be useful to aid sorting returned results.
For the first query I would create a index on the two array values and then which ever of the ranges will exclude the most documents. The date field is unlikely to provide high exclusion unless you can close the range (lte and gte). The integer and float is hard to tell without knowing the domain.
If the second query's two additional attributes also use ranges in the query and do not have a significantly higher exclusion value then I would just work with the one index.
Rob.

Related

Multi Column Indexes with Order By and OR clause

I have below query to fetch list of tickets.
EXPLAIN select * from ticket_type
where ticket_type.event_id='89898'
and ticket_type.active=true
and (ticket_type.is_unlimited = true OR ticket_type.number_of_sold_tickets < ticket_type.number_of_tickets)
order by ticket_type.ticket_type_order
I have created below indexes but not working.
Index on (ticket_type_order,event_id,is_unlimited,active)
Index on (ticket_type_order,event_id,active,number_of_sold_tickets,number_of_tickets).
The perfect index for this query would be
CREATE INDEX ON ticket_type (event_id, ticket_type_order)
WHERE active AND (is_unlimited OR number_of_sold_tickets < number_of_tickets);
Of course, a partial index like that might only be useful for this specific query.
If the WHERE conditions from the index definition are not very selective, or a somewhat slower execution is also acceptable, you can omit parts of or the whole WHERE clause. That makes the index more widely useful.
What is the size of the table and usual query result? The server is usually smart enough and disables indexes, if it expects to return more than the half of the table.
Index makes no sense, if the result is rather small. If the server has - let say - 1000 records after several filtration steps, the server stops using indexes. It is cheaper the finish the query using CPU, then loading an index from HDD. As result, indexes are never applied to small tables.
Order by is applied at the very end of the query processing. The first field in the index should be one of the fields from the where filter.
Boolean fields are seldom useful in the index. It has only two possible values. Index should be created for fields with a lot of different values.
Avoid or filtering. It is easy in your case. Put a very big number into number_of_tickets, if the tickets are unlimited.
The better index in your case would be just event_id. If the database server supports functional indexes, then you can try to add number_of_tickets - number_of_sold_tickets. Rewrite the statement as where number_of_tickets - number_of_sold_tickets > 0
UPDATE: Postgresql calls it "Index on Expression":
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/indexes-expressional.html

Firestore 1 global index vs 1 index per query what is better?

I'm working on my app and I just ran into a dilemma regarding what's the best way to handle indexes for firestore.
I have a query that search for publication in a specify community that contains at least one of the tag and in a geohash range. The index for that query looks like this:
community Ascending tag Ascending location.geohash Ascending
Now if my user doesnt need to filter by tag, I run the query without the arrayContains(tag) which prompt me to create another index:
community Ascending location.geohash Ascending
My question is, is it better to create that second index or, to just use the first one and specifying all possible tags in arrayContains in the query if the user want no filters on tag ?
Neither is pertinently better, but it's a typical space vs time tradeoff.
Adding the extra tags in the query adds some overhead there, but it saves you the (storage) cost for the additional index. So you're trading some small amount of runtime performance for a small amount of space/cost savings.
One thing to check is whether the query with tags can actually run on just the second index, as Firestore may be able to do a zigzag merge join. In that case you could only keep the second, smaller index and save the runtime performance of adding additional clauses, but then get a (similarly small) performance difference on the query where you do specify one or more tags.

Multiple indexes vs single index on multiple columns in postgresql

I could not reach any conclusive answers reading some of the existing posts on this topic.
I have certain data at 100 locations the for past 10 years. The table has about 800 million rows. I need to primarily generate yearly statistics for each location. Some times I need to generate monthly variation statistics and hourly variation statistics as well. I'm wondering if I should generate two indexes - one for location and another for year or generate one index on both location and year. My primary key currently is a serial number (Probably I could use location and timestamp as the primary key).
Thanks.
Regardless of how many indices have you created on relation, only one of them will be used in a certain query (which one depends on query, statistics etc). So in your case you wouldn't get a cumulative advantage from creating two single column indices. To get most performance from index I would suggest to use composite index on (location, timestamp).
Note, that queries like ... WHERE timestamp BETWEEN smth AND smth will not use the index above while queries like ... WHERE location = 'smth' or ... WHERE location = 'smth' AND timestamp BETWEEN smth AND smth will. It's because the first attribute in index is crucial for searching and sorting.
Don't forget to perform
ANALYZE;
after index creation in order to collect statistics.
Update:
As #MondKin mentioned in comments certain queries can actually use several indexes on the same relation. For example, query with OR clauses like a = 123 OR b = 456 (assuming that there are indexes for both columns). In this case postgres would perform bitmap index scans for both indexes, build a union of resulting bitmaps and use it for bitmap heap scan. In certain conditions the same scheme may be used for AND queries but instead of union there would be an intersection.
There is no rule of thumb for situations like these, I suggest you experiment in a copy of your production DB to see what works best for you: a single multi-column index or 2 single-column indexes.
One nice feature of Postgres is you can have multiple indexes and use them in the same query. Check this chapter of the docs:
... PostgreSQL has the ability to combine multiple indexes ... to handle cases that cannot be implemented by single index scans ....
... Sometimes multicolumn indexes are best, but sometimes it's better to create separate indexes and rely on the index-combination feature ...
You can even experiment creating both the individual and combined indexes, and checking how big each one is and determine if it's worth having them at the same time.
Some things that you can also experiment with:
If your table is too large, consider partitioning it. It looks like you could partition either by location or by date. Partitioning splits your table's data in smaller tables, reducing the amount of places where a query needs to look.
If your data is laid out according to a date (like transaction date) check BRIN indexes.
If multiple queries will be processing your data in a similar fashion (like aggregating all transactions over the same period, check materialized views so you only need to do those costly aggregations once.
About the order in which to put your multi-column index, put first the column on which you will have an equality operation, and later the column in which you have a range, >= or <= operation.
An index on (location,timestamp) should work better that 2 separate indexes for you case. Note that the order of the columns is important.

DB Compound indexing best practices Mongo DB

How costly is it to index some fields in MongoDB,
I have a table where i want uniqueness combining two fields, Every where i search they suggested compound index with unique set to true. But what i was doing is " Appending both field1_field2 and making it a key, so that field2 will be always unique for field1.(and add Application logic) As i thought indexing is costly.
And also as MongoDB documentation advices us not to use Custom Object ID like auto incrementing number, I end up giving big numbers to Models like Classes, Students etc, (where i could have used easily used 1,2,3 in sql lite), I didn't think to add a new field for numbering and index that field for querying.
What are the best practices advice for production
The advantage of using compound indexes vs your own indexed field system is that compound indexes allows sorting quicker than regular indexed fields. It also lowers the size of every documents.
In your case, if you want to get the documents sorted with values in field1 ascending and in field2 descending, it is better to use a compound index. If you only want to get the documents that have some specific value contained in field1_field2, it does not really matter if you use compound indexes or a regular indexed field.
However, if you already have field1 and field2 in seperate fields in the documents, and you also have a field containing field1_field2, it could be better to use a compound index on field1 and field2, and simply delete the field containing field1_field2. This could lower the size of every document and ultimately reduce the size of your database.
Regarding the cost of the indexing, you almost have to index field1_field2 if you want to go down that route anyways. Queries based on unindexed fields in MongoDB are really slow. And it does not take much more time adding a document to a database when the document has an indexed field (we're talking 1 millisecond or so). Note that adding an index on many existing documents can take a few minutes. This is why you usually plan the indexing strategy before adding any documents.
TL;DR:
If you have limited disk space or need to sort the results, go with a compound index and delete field1_field2. Otherwise, use field1_field2, but it has to be indexed!

compound Index or single index in mongodb

I got a query like this that gets called 90% of the times:
db.xyz.find({ "ws.wz.eId" : 665 , "ws.ce1.id" : 665)
and another one like this that gets called 10% of the times:
db.xyz.find({ "ws.wz.eId" : 111 , "ws.ce2.id" : 111)
You can see that the id for the two collections in both queries are the same.
Now I'm wondering if I should just create a single index just for "ws.wz.eId" or if I should create two compound indexes: one for {"ws.wz.eId", "ws.ce.id"} and another one for {"ws.wz.eId", "ws.ce2.id"}
It seems to me that the single index is the best choice; however I might be wrong; so I would like to know if there is value in creating the compound index, or any other type.
As muratgu already pointed out, the best way to reason about performance is to stop reasoning and start measuring instead.
However, since measurements can be quite tricky, here's some theory:
You might want to consider one compound index {"ws.wz.eId", "ws.ce1.id"} because that can be used for the 90% case and, for the ten percent case, is equivalent to just having an index on ws.wz.eId.
When you do this, the first query can be matched through the index, the second query will have to find all candidates with matching ws.wz.eId first (fast, index present) and then scan-and-match all candidates to filter out those documents that don't match the ws.ce2.id criterion. Whether that is expensive or not depends on the number of documents with same ws.wz.eId that must be scanned, so this depends very much on your data.
An important factor is the selectivity of the key. For example, if there's a million documents with same ws.wz.eId and only one of those has the ws.ce2.id you're looking for, you might need the index, or want to reverse the query.