Advanced PostgreSQL Indexing Strategies

Beyond Primary Keys

Most developers stop at Primary Key indexes. But when dealing with geo-spatial data or full-text search, standard B-Trees fail.

GIN Indexes for JSONB

We heavily use JSONB columns for flexible schemas. Querying them without a GIN index is a full table scan waiting to happen.

CREATE INDEX idx_data_gin ON transactions USING GIN (data);

Partial Indexes

If you only query active users, why index the inactive ones?

CREATE INDEX idx_active_users ON users (email) WHERE status = 'active';

This simple change reduced our index size by 70% and sped up login queries significantly.