<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >GIN and GiST Index Types</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.79"><LINK REV="MADE" HREF="mailto:pgsql-docs@postgresql.org"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="PostgreSQL 9.6.21 Documentation" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="UP" TITLE="Full Text Search" HREF="textsearch.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="Testing and Debugging Text Search" HREF="textsearch-debugging.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="psql Support" HREF="textsearch-psql.html"><LINK REL="STYLESHEET" TYPE="text/css" HREF="stylesheet.css"><META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"><META NAME="creation" CONTENT="2021-02-27T18:26:08"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="SECT1" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="4" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="index.html" >PostgreSQL 9.6.21 Documentation</A ></TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A TITLE="Testing and Debugging Text Search" HREF="textsearch-debugging.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="textsearch.html" ACCESSKEY="U" >Up</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="60%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" >Chapter 12. Full Text Search</TD ><TD WIDTH="20%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A TITLE="psql Support" HREF="textsearch-psql.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT1" ><H1 CLASS="SECT1" ><A NAME="TEXTSEARCH-INDEXES" >12.9. GIN and GiST Index Types</A ></H1 ><P > There are two kinds of indexes that can be used to speed up full text searches. Note that indexes are not mandatory for full text searching, but in cases where a column is searched on a regular basis, an index is usually desirable. <P ></P ></P><DIV CLASS="VARIABLELIST" ><DL ><DT > <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >CREATE INDEX <TT CLASS="REPLACEABLE" ><I >name</I ></TT > ON <TT CLASS="REPLACEABLE" ><I >table</I ></TT > USING GIN (<TT CLASS="REPLACEABLE" ><I >column</I ></TT >);</TT ></DT ><DD ><P > Creates a GIN (Generalized Inverted Index)-based index. The <TT CLASS="REPLACEABLE" ><I >column</I ></TT > must be of <TT CLASS="TYPE" >tsvector</TT > type. </P ></DD ><DT > <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >CREATE INDEX <TT CLASS="REPLACEABLE" ><I >name</I ></TT > ON <TT CLASS="REPLACEABLE" ><I >table</I ></TT > USING GIST (<TT CLASS="REPLACEABLE" ><I >column</I ></TT >);</TT ></DT ><DD ><P > Creates a GiST (Generalized Search Tree)-based index. The <TT CLASS="REPLACEABLE" ><I >column</I ></TT > can be of <TT CLASS="TYPE" >tsvector</TT > or <TT CLASS="TYPE" >tsquery</TT > type. </P ></DD ></DL ></DIV ><P> </P ><P > GIN indexes are the preferred text search index type. As inverted indexes, they contain an index entry for each word (lexeme), with a compressed list of matching locations. Multi-word searches can find the first match, then use the index to remove rows that are lacking additional words. GIN indexes store only the words (lexemes) of <TT CLASS="TYPE" >tsvector</TT > values, and not their weight labels. Thus a table row recheck is needed when using a query that involves weights. </P ><P > A GiST index is <I CLASS="FIRSTTERM" >lossy</I >, meaning that the index might produce false matches, and it is necessary to check the actual table row to eliminate such false matches. (<SPAN CLASS="PRODUCTNAME" >PostgreSQL</SPAN > does this automatically when needed.) GiST indexes are lossy because each document is represented in the index by a fixed-length signature. The signature is generated by hashing each word into a single bit in an n-bit string, with all these bits OR-ed together to produce an n-bit document signature. When two words hash to the same bit position there will be a false match. If all words in the query have matches (real or false) then the table row must be retrieved to see if the match is correct. </P ><P > Lossiness causes performance degradation due to unnecessary fetches of table records that turn out to be false matches. Since random access to table records is slow, this limits the usefulness of GiST indexes. The likelihood of false matches depends on several factors, in particular the number of unique words, so using dictionaries to reduce this number is recommended. </P ><P > Note that <ACRONYM CLASS="ACRONYM" >GIN</ACRONYM > index build time can often be improved by increasing <A HREF="runtime-config-resource.html#GUC-MAINTENANCE-WORK-MEM" >maintenance_work_mem</A >, while <ACRONYM CLASS="ACRONYM" >GiST</ACRONYM > index build time is not sensitive to that parameter. </P ><P > Partitioning of big collections and the proper use of GIN and GiST indexes allows the implementation of very fast searches with online update. Partitioning can be done at the database level using table inheritance, or by distributing documents over servers and collecting search results using the <A HREF="dblink.html" >dblink</A > module. The latter is possible because ranking functions use only local information. </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="textsearch-debugging.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="textsearch-psql.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >Testing and Debugging Text Search</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="textsearch.html" ACCESSKEY="U" >Up</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><SPAN CLASS="APPLICATION" >psql</SPAN > Support</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >