High Performance PostgreSQL for Rails

Wrapping Up

You’ve learned a lot about index types, how to create them, when they’re useful, and when they’re not. You’ve learned how to optimize queries using a variety of index types and options that are available to you in PostgreSQL.

You saw how indexes help speed up queries and support ordering. Indexes also consume space and add latency. You became aware of those trade-offs to better inform your future designs. Indexes are only useful when they provide a benefit to queries.

Part of operating an efficient database is identifying “unused indexes” that can be removed. How do you identify them, and then how do you safely remove them? What other types of database maintenance operations are useful that help you achieve the best possible performance? ...