In this section, you will learn about the power of correlation and of clustered tables. What is this about? Imagine that you want to read a whole area of data. This might be a certain time range, a block, some IDs, and so on.
The runtime of these queries will vary, depending on the amount of data and the physical arrangement of data on the disk. So, even if you are running queries that return the same number of rows, two systems might not provide the answer within the same time span, as the physical disk layout might make a difference.
Here is an example:
test=# EXPLAIN (analyze true, buffers true, timing true)
SELECT *
FROM t_test
WHERE id < 10000;
QUERY PLAN
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Index Scan using idx_id on t_test (cost=0.43..322.63 rows=9383 width=9)
(actual time=0.469..4.476 rows=9999 loops=1)
Index...