BRIN is 1/4570th the size of a B-tree, until 5% of rows are updated
This technical analysis compares the performance of BRIN indexes in PostgreSQL against traditional B-trees. It highlights that while BRIN is significantly smaller, its efficiency degrades rapidly once data updates exceed a 5% threshold.
Why it matters
Provides essential performance tuning advice for database administrators managing large-scale PostgreSQL datasets.
All posts Oracle vs Postgres Aug 27, 2026 11 min read BRIN is 1/4570th the size of a B-tree, until 5% of rows are updated I co-owned the Zonemaps module at Oracle, and BRIN is the same design in Postgres. It stops pruning long before pg_stats.correlation admits anything is wrong — at correlation 0.921, a 28x collapse. Measured on 10M rows, harness inline.
DeepSQL R&D · Ex Oracle Query Engine Team · YC & CMU
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in