Turbo Mode (AOT)

For datasets > 1M rows, indices are not enough. Computing tsvector on the fly during search becomes a CPU bottleneck. Turbo Mode solves this using PostgreSQLs Stored Generated Columns.

How Turbo Mode Works

Instead of computing the tsvector on the fly like this:

-- Without Turbo Mode (Computed on read)
SELECT * FROM products
WHERE to_tsvector(english, name ||   || description) @@ plainto_tsquery(laptop);

Turbo Mode pre-computes and stores the vector in the table:

-- With Turbo Mode (Computed on write)
SELECT * FROM products
WHERE search_vector @@ plainto_tsquery(laptop);

This shifts the CPU cost from read-time to write-time. Since most applications read far more than they write, this results in dramatic latency improvements.

Setup

You can enable Turbo Mode easily using the interactive CLI:

npx pg-smart-search init
# Choose "Yes" when prompted for Turbo Mode / Generated Columns

Or configure it manually in your engine initialization:

const engine = new TrigramSearchEngine(adapter, {
  tableName: "products",
  searchColumns: ["name", "description"],
  ftsColumn: "search_vector", // This activates Turbo Mode
});