DISTINCT Tuple filtering is applied for a DISTINCT when the following criteria are met.

The set of column references must be an in-order prefix of the index.

Here is the most common case in which tuple filtering will be applied:

SELECT DISTINCT c1 FROM t1

Equality predicates allow tuple filtering on the following:

SELECT DISTINCT c2 FROM t1 WHERE c1 = 5 SELECT DISTINCT c2, c4 FROM t1 WHERE c1 = 5 and c3 = 7 -- the columns don't have to be in the -- same order as the index SELECT DISTINCT c2, c1 FROM t1