Slow INSERT as compared to UPDATE

Lists: pgsql-students
From: preetika tyagi <preetikatyagi(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: pgsql-students(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Slow INSERT as compared to UPDATE
Date: 2011-03-15 19:49:46
Message-ID: AANLkTikLMpW4W=N4t8SVsN366jY22VDyOgzpQmFqK6bc@mail.gmail.com
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Lists: pgsql-students

Hi All,

When I insert or update a record in a table in PostgreSQL, the time taken by
insert query is much larger (300 ms) than the time taken by update query (20
ms). If I think logically, there should not be a significant difference. To
insert a record, it will check/insert the entry in the index and insert the
record in the table (unclustered B Tree indexing on primary key). For
update, it will search the entry in the indexing and update the record. In
both the cases, the number of operations/disk accesses are nearly equal.
Then why such a big execution time difference?

Thanks,
Preetika