<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >Implementation</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 8.3.6 Documentation" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="UP" TITLE="GIN Indexes" HREF="gin.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="Extensibility" HREF="gin-extensibility.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="GIN tips and tricks" HREF="gin-tips.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="2009-02-03T04:34:16"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="SECT1" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="5" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" >PostgreSQL 8.3.6 Documentation</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="gin-extensibility.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="gin.html" >Fast Backward</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="60%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" >Chapter 52. GIN Indexes</TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="gin.html" >Fast Forward</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="gin-tips.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT1" ><H1 CLASS="SECT1" ><A NAME="GIN-IMPLEMENTATION" >52.3. Implementation</A ></H1 ><P > Internally, a <ACRONYM CLASS="ACRONYM" >GIN</ACRONYM > index contains a B-tree index constructed over keys, where each key is an element of the indexed value (a member of an array, for example) and where each tuple in a leaf page is either a pointer to a B-tree over heap pointers (PT, posting tree), or a list of heap pointers (PL, posting list) if the list is small enough. </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="gin-extensibility.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="gin-tips.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >Extensibility</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="gin.html" ACCESSKEY="U" >Up</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >GIN tips and tricks</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >