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A case-insensitive wildcard search (name__icontains='something') will DEFINITELY be a more expensive DB query than a case-sensitive exact match (name='something'). 5 times slower doesn’t sound unreasonable, and it will vary heavily based on any and all of the following:
- Database Engine (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, etc.)
- Number of records in the DB
- Volume of text in each name field that it has to search through
- Whether or not there’s an appropriate index the DB can use for that column
The last one there is very tricky. Doing full-text indexing for a database is very hard to get right, very easy to get wrong, and not even supported by all database engines.
The same goes for date vs. date__range: you’re using a quick, simple, easy-to-index exact match in one, and an inexact match in the other.
The bottom line: if you don’t need inexact matches, then don’t use them. They’re expensive DB operations and WILL take significantly longer.
0👍
I doubt if anyone can guess, how exactly your database behaved 🙂 But you can use this middleware:
http://djangosnippets.org/snippets/161/
and check, what kind of sql queries were made and how much time they took.