Efficient querying of multi-partition Postgres table

Question

I've just restructured my database to use partitioning in Postgres 8.2. Now I have a problem with query performance:

SELECT *
FROM my_table
WHERE time_stamp >= '2010-02-10' and time_stamp < '2010-02-11'
ORDER BY id DESC
LIMIT 100;

There are 45 million rows in the table. Prior to partitioning, this would use a reverse index scan and stop as soon as it hit the limit.

After partitioning (on time_stamp ranges), Postgres does a full index scan of the master table and the relevant partition and merges the results, sorts them, then applies the limit. This takes way too long.

I can fix it with:

SELECT * FROM (
  SELECT *
  FROM my_table_part_a
  WHERE time_stamp >= '2010-02-10' and time_stamp < '2010-02-11'
  ORDER BY id DESC
  LIMIT 100) t
UNION ALL
SELECT * FROM (
  SELECT *
  FROM my_table_part_b
  WHERE time_stamp >= '2010-02-10' and time_stamp < '2010-02-11'
  ORDER BY id DESC
  LIMIT 100) t
UNION ALL
  ... and so on ...
ORDER BY id DESC
LIMIT 100

This runs quickly. The partitions where the times-stamps are out-of-range aren't even included in the query plan.

My question is: Is there some hint or syntax I can use in Postgres 8.2 to prevent the query-planner from scanning the full table but still using simple syntax that only refers to the master table?

Basically, can I avoid the pain of dynamically building the big UNION query over each partition that happens to be currently defined?

EDIT: I have constraint_exclusion enabled (thanks @Vinko Vrsalovic)

Answer 1

Have you tried Constraint Exclusion (section 5.9.4 in the document you've linked to)

Constraint exclusion is a query optimization technique that improves performance for partitioned tables defined in the fashion described above. As an example:

 SET constraint_exclusion = on; 
 SELECT count(*) FROM measurement WHERE logdate >= DATE '2006-01-01'; 

Without constraint exclusion, the above query would scan each of the partitions of the measurement table. With constraint exclusion enabled, the planner will examine the constraints of each partition and try to prove that the partition need not be scanned because it could not contain any rows meeting the query's WHERE clause. When the planner can prove this, it excludes the partition from the query plan.

You can use the EXPLAIN command to show the difference between a plan with constraint_exclusion on and a plan with it off.