# Is there a simple way to re-add missing database indexes?

**URL:** <https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/is-there-a-simple-way-to-re-add-missing-database-indexes/35834>\
**Category:** Using the ORM\
**Created:** [October 21, 2024, 2:16pm UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/is-there-a-simple-way-to-re-add-missing-database-indexes/35834 "2024-10-21T14:16:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![philgyford](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex026/user_avatar/forum.djangoproject.com/philgyford/32/14295_2.png) [@philgyford](https://forum.djangoproject.com/u/philgyford)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2024, 2:16pm UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/is-there-a-simple-way-to-re-add-missing-database-indexes/35834/1 "2024-10-21T14:16:42Z")

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**Briefly:** I noticed today that many of the indexes were missing from my Postgres database’s tables. I’m wondering if there’s a way to compare the indexes that would be generated by the Django migrations, and apply them to the database if they don’t already exist?

**Longer:** It seemed quite random – some tables were missing a few indexes, others had none at all. Most of the ones with no indexes were later, if ordering tables by name, so I suspect that a dump and restore of the database at some point in the past went wrong.

I fixed this manually by:

1. On my dev machine, creating a new database and running all the Django migrations on it.
2. On there, in `psql`, doing:

```sql
SELECT * FROM pg_indexes
WHERE indexname NOT LIKE 'pg_%'
ORDER BY tablename, indexname;

```

3. Doing the same on the production database.
4. Comparing the two lists and running the `indexdef` command on the production database for each missing index.

Obviously, this behaviour is not recommended 🙂 It’s not a life-or-death site and it seems to have gone OK. Only one table had some duplicate data that I had to carefully remove before applying a UNIQUE index.

So, besides wondering why I hadn’t noticed things being slow due to lack of indexes, I’m wondering if there’s a better way to get my database’s indexes in sync with those that Django’s migrations would generate.