From 272c5d72991f1633e0c44bc379321077919c4e34 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: jbranchaud <jbranchaud@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2016 21:45:50 -0500
Subject: [PATCH] Add Lower Is Faster Than ilike as a postgres til

---
 README.md                              |  3 ++-
 postgres/lower-is-faster-than-ilike.md | 33 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 35 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
 create mode 100644 postgres/lower-is-faster-than-ilike.md

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index b8c233b..9df0e95 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ variety of languages and technologies. These are things that don't really
 warrant a full blog post. These are mostly things I learn by pairing with
 smart people at [Hashrocket](http://hashrocket.com/).
 
-_402 TILs and counting..._
+_403 TILs and counting..._
 
 ---
 
@@ -211,6 +211,7 @@ _402 TILs and counting..._
 - [List Connections To A Database](postgres/list-connections-to-a-database.md)
 - [List Database Users](postgres/list-database-users.md)
 - [List Various Kinds Of Objects](postgres/list-various-kinds-of-objects.md)
+- [Lower Is Faster Than ilike](postgres/lower-is-faster-than-ilike.md)
 - [Max Identifier Length Is 63 Bytes](postgres/max-identifier-length-is-63-bytes.md)
 - [pg Prefix Is Reserved For System Schemas](postgres/pg-prefix-is-reserved-for-system-schemas.md)
 - [Pretty Print Data Sizes](postgres/pretty-print-data-sizes.md)
diff --git a/postgres/lower-is-faster-than-ilike.md b/postgres/lower-is-faster-than-ilike.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..17dfdba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/postgres/lower-is-faster-than-ilike.md
@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
+# Lower Is Faster Than ilike
+
+There are a couple ways to do a case-insensitive comparison of data in
+PostgreSQL. One way is to use the `ilike` operator for comparison. Another
+way is to use the `lower()` function on both sides of the `=` operator for
+comparison. Using `lower()` is a bit faster than using `ilike`.
+
+When comparing
+
+```sql
+select * from users where email ilike 'some-email@example.com';
+```
+
+to
+
+```sql
+select * from users where lower(email) = lower('some-email@example.com');
+```
+
+we find (via `explain analyze`) that using `lower()` was taking around 12ms
+where as the `ilike` example was taking around 17ms.
+
+We earn orders of magnitude in performance when adding a functional index
+that uses the `lower()` function like so:
+
+```sql
+create unique index users_unique_lower_email_idx on users (lower(email));
+```
+
+After adding this index, the example using `lower()` drops to around 0.08ms.
+
+For the full example and `explain analyze` outputs, [see this
+document](https://github.com/jbranchaud/postgresing/blob/master/ilike_vs_lower.sql).