PostgreSQL 7.4 Documentation
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# 12.5. Locking and Indexes

Though PostgreSQL provides nonblocking read/write access to table data, nonblocking read/write access is not currently offered for every index access method implemented in PostgreSQL. The various index types are handled as follows:

B-tree indexes

  Short-term share/exclusive page-level locks are used for read/write access. Locks are released immediately after each index row is fetched or inserted. B-tree indexes provide the highest concurrency without deadlock conditions.

GiST and R-tree indexes

  Share/exclusive index-level locks are used for read/write access. Locks are released after the command is done.

Hash indexes

  Share/exclusive page-level locks are used for read/write access. Locks are released after the page is processed. Page-level locks provide better concurrency than index-level ones but are liable to deadlocks.

In short, B-tree indexes offer the best performance for concurrent applications; since they also have more features than hash indexes, they are the recommended index type for concurrent applications that need to index scalar data. When dealing with non-scalar data, B-trees obviously cannot be used; in that situation, application developers should be aware of the relatively poor concurrent performance of GiST and R-tree indexes.

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