Index Advisor components v16

The Index Advisor shared library interacts with the query planner to make indexing recommendations.

On Windows, the EDB Postgres Advanced Server installer creates the shared library in the libdir subdirectory of your EDB Postgres Advanced Server home directory. The shared library is:

index_advisor.dll

For Linux, install the edb-as<xx>-server-indexadvisor RPM package, where <xx> is the EDB Postgres Advanced Server version number. The shared library is:

index_advisor.so

Only a superuser can load libraries in the libdir directory. A database administrator can allow a non-superuser to use Index Advisor by manually copying the Index Advisor file from the libdir directory into the libdir/plugins directory under your EDB Postgres Advanced Server home directory. Only allow a trusted non-superuser to have access to the plugin. This is an unsafe practice in a production environment.

The installer also creates the Index Advisor utility program and setup script:

pg_advise_index

A utility program that reads a user-supplied input file containing SQL queries and produces a text file containing CREATE INDEX statements. You can use these statements to create the indexes recommended by the Index Advisor. The pg_advise_index program is located in the bin subdirectory of the EDB Postgres Advanced Server home directory.

Note

pg_advise_index asks the backend process to load the index_advisor plugin first from $libdir/plugins. If not found, then it writes the error in the server log file and attempts to load from $libdir.

index_advisor_log

Index Advisor logs indexing recommendations in the index_advisor_log table. If Index Advisor doesn't find the index_advisor_log table in the user's search path, it stores any indexing recommendations in a temporary table of the same name. The temporary table exists only for rest of the current session.

show_index_recommendations()

A PL/pgSQL function that interprets and displays the recommendations made during a specific Index Advisor session, as identified by its backend process ID.

index_recommendations

Index Advisor creates the index_recommendations view based on information stored in the index_advisor_log table during a query analysis. The view produces output in the same format as the show_index_recommendations() function but contains Index Advisor recommendations for all stored sessions. The result set returned by the show_index_recommendations() function is limited to a specified session.