</para>
<para>
- Indexes can be used via either simple index scans or <quote>bitmap</>
- index scans. In a bitmap scan
+ Indexes can be used by simple index scans, <quote>bitmap</> index scans,
+ and the optimizer. In a bitmap scan
the output of several indexes can be combined via AND or OR rules,
so it is difficult to associate individual heap row fetches
with specific indexes when a bitmap scan is used. Therefore, a bitmap
<structname>pg_stat_all_tables</>.<structfield>idx_tup_fetch</>
count for the table, but it does not affect
<structname>pg_stat_all_indexes</>.<structfield>idx_tup_fetch</>.
+ The optimizer also accesses indexes to check for supplied constants
+ whose values are outside the recorded range of the optimizer statistics
+ because the optimizer statistics might be stale.
</para>
<note>