PostgreSQL 10 High Performance

Timing overhead

Assume you're executing a simple query to count all the customers in the database, and want to time how long this takes:

dellstore2=# \timing
Timing is on.
dellstore2=# SELECT count(*) FROM customers;
 count 
-------
 20000
Time: 7.994 ms

You may then be curious to know which query plan was used to get this result. The amount of time taken to determine that may shock you:

dellstore2=# EXPLAIN ANALYZE SELECT count(*) FROM customers;
QUERY PLAN                                                     
----------
Aggregate  (cost=726.00..726.01 rows=1 width=0) (actual time=68.836..68.838 rows=1 loops=1)
        ->  Seq Scan on customers  (cost=0.00..676.00 rows=20000 width=0) (actual time=0.012..33.609 rows=20000 loops=1)
  Total runtime: 68.934 ms
  Time: 69.837 ms
  

This fairly trivial query was ...