TLDR Web Dev · MISCELLANEOUS

HOW SLOW IS SELECT * ?

medium.com4 min read

Summary from the TLDR Web Dev newsletter

"SELECT *" SQL queries fetch all columns from a row-store database. This is often quite slow due to issues like index-only scans, deserialization cost, external storage for large columns, network cost, client deserialization, and unpredictability. Selecting only the necessary columns avoids unnecessary overhead and leads to faster, more efficient queries.