Indeed. What I found interesting (and I guess it makes sense once I
think it through) is that:

column != value (or column <> value)

Will almost always perform a table scan (i.e. not use indices) whereas
"column IN (everything possible but value)" does the same logic but uses
the index and performs hugely better.

For us, we don't have even distribution on "triState". It's actually
called "groupableType" and only a few rows will have the "root" type. So
the index helps quite a bit for finding the root node.

R.

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Vinkenoog [mailto:paul@...]
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 5:35 PM
To: firebird-support@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [firebird-support] Table Scans and !=


Hi Sean,

>> Is it pretty common knowledge that != on a field always does a
>> table scan?
>
> No!
>
> In fact, what does != signify? Not equal?

Yes, !- means the same in C as <> in Pascal. Both are recognized by
IB/FB. Kind of weird, actually. (I wonder if both are standard SQL?)

Greetings,
Paul Vinkenoog


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