Slow Query Analyzer

When to activate

• Investigating queries exceeding latency thresholds (>500ms p95)
• Analyzing pg_stat_statements or slow query logs
• Rewriting inefficient joins, subqueries, or N+1 patterns
• Identifying missing indexes causing sequential scans
• Profiling ORM-generated queries for optimization

When NOT to use

• For index design at scale (use index-optimizer)
• For database-wide performance tuning (use query-tuner)
• For connection pooling issues

Instructions

1. Collect slow query log. Enable log_min_duration_statement or query pg_stat_statements for top-N by total time.
2. Rank by impact. Sort queries by total_time (not just mean_time) to find the biggest cumulative offenders.
3. Run EXPLAIN ANALYZE. For each top query, capture the actual execution plan with buffer usage.
4. Identify bottlenecks. Look for sequential scans on large tables, nested loops with high row counts, hash joins spilling to disk.
5. Propose rewrites. Replace correlated subqueries with JOINs, add LIMIT/OFFSET pagination, eliminate SELECT *.
6. Validate improvements. Re-run EXPLAIN ANALYZE after changes; document before/after execution time.
7. Report findings. Output a table: query fingerprint, current latency, root cause, fix applied, new latency.

Example

-- Top 10 slowest queries by total time
SELECT query, calls, total_time, mean_time, rows
FROM pg_stat_statements
ORDER BY total_time DESC
LIMIT 10;

-- EXPLAIN ANALYZE with buffers
EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS, FORMAT TEXT) SELECT ... ;