Indexes

An index is a data structure that allows faster access to the underlying table so that specific tuples can be found quickly. Here, “quickly” means faster than scanning the whole underlying table and analyzing every single tuple.

PostgreSQL supports different types of indexes, and not all types are optimal for every scenario and workload. In the following sections, you will discover the main types of indexes that PostgreSQL provides, but in any case, you can extend PostgreSQL with your own indexes or indexes provided by extensions.

An index in PostgreSQL can be built on a single column or multiple columns at once; PostgreSQL supports indexes with up to 32 columns.

An index can cover all the data in the underlying table, or can index specific values only – in that case, the index is known as “partial.” For example, you can decide to index only those values of certain columns that you are going to use the most.

An index can also...