CLUSTERing on geometry indices

CLUSTERing on geometry indices

For tables that are mostly read-only, and where a single index is used for the majority of queries, PostgreSQL offers the CLUSTER command. This command physically reorders all the data rows in the same order as the index criteria, yielding two performance advantages: First, for index range scans, the number of seeks on the data table is drastically reduced. Second, if your working set concentrates to some small intervals on the indices, you have a more efficient caching because the data rows are spread along fewer data pages. (Feel invited to read the CLUSTER command documentation from the PostgreSQL manual at this point.)

However, currently PostgreSQL does not allow clustering on PostGIS GIST indices because GIST indices simply ignores NULL values, you get an error message like:

lwgeom=# CLUSTER my_geom_index ON my_table;
ERROR: cannot cluster when index access method does not handle null values
HINT: You may be able to work around this by marking column "geom" NOT NULL.

As the HINT message tells you, one can work around this deficiency by adding a "not null" constraint to the table:

lwgeom=# ALTER TABLE my_table ALTER COLUMN geom SET not null;
ALTER TABLE

Of course, this will not work if you in fact need NULL values in your geometry column. Additionally, you must use the above method to add the constraint, using a CHECK constraint like "ALTER TABLE blubb ADD CHECK (geometry is not null);" will not work.