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Eric Allam db67a856fe
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perf(webapp,database): index the newest-task-version lookup (#4518)
Implementing PlanetScale Insights improvement.

## Summary

Validating a schedule (creating or updating one through the API or the
dashboard, and deploying a project that declares schedules) looks up the
newest version of a task by slug. That lookup reads *every* version of
the task and sorts them to return one. A project gains a row per task on
every deploy, so the work grows with the project's age: the oldest
projects pay the most, and dev-mode redeploys make it worse. This was
picked because it was the largest single consumer of database time on
the schedules path, and the fix is a sort key with no index behind it.

## Fix

`BackgroundWorkerTask` is indexed on `(projectId, slug)`, which serves
the equality but not the `ORDER BY createdAt DESC`. Postgres seeks the
index, then bitmap-scans and top-N sorts the whole group to produce a
single row. Adding `createdAt` to the index lets it scan backward and
stop at the first row.

The same call site also selected all 21 columns, including five JSON
blobs, to read one field (`triggerSource`), so it now selects that field
alone.

## Benchmark

Local Postgres 17, 997,000 seeded rows / 748 MB, group sizes chosen to
match the distribution seen in production.

| Group size | Before | After |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 15,000 versions of one task | 11.118 ms, 1,510 buffers, 15,000 rows
scanned | 0.027 ms, 4 buffers, 1 row |
| 2,000 versions of one task | 2.081 ms, 1,455 buffers, 2,000 rows
scanned | 0.022 ms, 4 buffers, 1 row |

```
before:  Limit -> Sort (top-N heapsort) -> Bitmap Heap Scan
after:   Limit -> Index Scan Backward using BackgroundWorkerTask_projectId_slug_createdAt_idx
```

An ascending index scanned backward is enough here, so no descending
index is needed.

## Impact and risk

Real-world gain lands between the two rows above and scales with how
many deploys a project has accumulated. Projects with few deploys will
see little change, since there is barely anything to sort.

The new index costs noticeably more than the existing two-column one: 43
MB against 7.3 MB on the benchmark rig. Adding `createdAt` makes every
key unique, which defeats btree deduplication, so this is a real disk
and write cost rather than a rounding error. Writes to this table happen
at deploy time, not on the run path, so the write amplification is
acceptable. The existing `(projectId, slug)` index is now a redundant
prefix and could be dropped, but this PR keeps it so index usage can be
observed before removing it.

Behavior is unchanged: same predicate, same ordering, same row returned.
The narrowed select is the only code change, and the field it keeps is
the only one the caller read.

Deploy note: the migration is
`20260806100000_add_background_worker_task_project_id_slug_created_at_index`
and uses `CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY IF NOT EXISTS`, so it can be
pre-applied by hand before the deploy.
2026-08-07 11:17:10 +01:00
..
2025-08-27 16:52:58 +01:00
2025-07-30 13:48:02 +01:00

@trigger.dev/database

This is the internal database package for the Trigger.dev project. It exports a generated prisma client that can be instantiated with a connection string.

How to switch branches when you've done migrations

Sometimes you've applied migrations and then want to switch branches without wiping out your local database.

To do this you can run the following command:

DB_VOLUME=database-data-alt pnpm run docker

This will switch to the alt volume for your local database. This database will be blank if you haven't switched to this volume before, so you'll need to follow the normal steps (in the Contributing guide) to get setup, e.g. apply migrations and seed.

To switch back to the original volume, run the following command:

pnpm run docker

How to add a new index on a large table

  1. Modify the Prisma.schema with a single index change (no other changes, just one index at a time)
  2. Create a Prisma migration using cd internal-packages/database && pnpm run db:migrate:dev:create
  3. Modify the SQL file: add IF NOT EXISTS to it and CONCURRENTLY:
CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY IF NOT EXISTS "JobRun_eventId_idx" ON "JobRun" ("eventId");
  1. Dont apply the Prisma migration locally yet. This is a good opportunity to test the flow.
  2. Manually apply the index to your database, by running the index command.
  3. Then locally run pnpm run db:migrate:deploy

Before deploying

Run the index creation before deploying

CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY IF NOT EXISTS "JobRun_eventId_idx" ON "JobRun" ("eventId");

These commands are useful:

-- creates an index safely, this can take a long time (2 mins maybe)
CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY IF NOT EXISTS "JobRun_eventId_idx" ON "JobRun" ("eventId");
-- checks the status of an index
SELECT * FROM pg_stat_progress_create_index WHERE relid = '"JobRun"'::regclass;
-- checks if the index is there
SELECT * FROM pg_indexes WHERE tablename = 'JobRun' AND indexname = 'JobRun_eventId_idx';

Now, when you deploy and prisma runs the migration, it will skip the index creation because it already exists. If you don't do this, there will be pain.