Production Schema Step 7: Plan and Index

Load a realistic volume of data, at least tens of thousands of rows, generated if necessary. Run EXPLAIN ANALYZE on your five most common queries and record the plan, the estimated rows and the actual rows for each. Where the estimate is badly wrong, run ANALYZE and try again. Add indexes only where a plan justified it, one at a time, re-running the plan after each, and remove any that changed nothing. Record the before and after timings honestly, including the queries you left alone.