perf(database): index ProjectAlert.channelId so alert-channel deletes stop seq-scanning (#4554)

## Why this change

Deleting a `ProjectAlertChannel` fires the FK cascade `DELETE FROM ONLY
"ProjectAlert" WHERE $1 = "channelId"`. That cascade is scan-shaped:
with no index on `channelId`, it reads the entire `ProjectAlert` table
to find the few child rows belonging to the deleted channel. The parent
`DELETE ProjectAlertChannel` does almost no work itself; its latency is
dominated by this cascade. `ProjectAlert` is append-heavy and grows over
time, so the scan cost only increases.

## Diagnosis

`ProjectAlert` had no index on `channelId` (only `pkey` + a `friendlyId`
unique). The cascade therefore did a full sequential scan of the whole
table. The sibling `ProjectAlertStorage` cascade on the same delete is
index-backed and stays fast, which isolates the missing index as the
cause.

## Change

Add `@@index([channelId])` on `ProjectAlert`, created with `CREATE INDEX
CONCURRENTLY IF NOT EXISTS` so `prisma migrate deploy` stays safe on a
live table.

## Benchmark (local, seeded)

Local Postgres seeded with 1,000,000 `ProjectAlert` rows across 50
channels (~20k rows per channel), `EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS)` on the
cascade delete:

| | before | after |
|---|---|---|
| plan | Seq Scan (1M rows) | Bitmap Index Scan |
| direct child delete | 740 ms | 22 ms |
| parent delete `ProjectAlert_channelId_fkey` trigger | 77.7 ms | 23.8
ms |

## Expected impact

The cascade drops from a full-table sequential scan to a targeted index
lookup. The win grows with the table: the more rows in `ProjectAlert`,
the more a scan costs and the more the index saves, so the benefit is
larger than the seeded numbers above.

## Risks

- One extra btree to maintain on every `ProjectAlert` insert; acceptable
for a single-column index on a high-insert table, and it should be
pre-created before the migration deploys (per the repo index rules).
- No behavior change: no rows orphaned, no ordering or result-set
change, read paths untouched.

## Follow-up

`ProjectAlert`'s other cascade FK columns (`projectId`, `environmentId`,
`workerDeploymentId`) are also unindexed, but their parents are
soft-deleted rather than physically removed, so those cascades do not
currently fire. Lower priority unless a hard-delete path is introduced.
This commit is contained in:
Eric Allam
2026-08-10 13:54:15 +01:00
committed by GitHub
parent 951d8e8d7b
commit 4c58091973
3 changed files with 10 additions and 0 deletions
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
---
area: webapp
type: improvement
---
Deleting an alert channel is now fast and no longer slows down as a project builds up alert history.
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
-- CreateIndex
CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY IF NOT EXISTS "ProjectAlert_channelId_idx" ON "public"."ProjectAlert"("channelId");
@@ -2412,6 +2412,8 @@ model ProjectAlert {
createdAt DateTime @default(now())
updatedAt DateTime @updatedAt
@@index([channelId])
}
enum ProjectAlertType {