Django Materialized Views

Use this skill when an expensive read query is reused often and can tolerate controlled staleness. Try query-plan, index, and ORM expression improvements first; materialized views add operational state.

Workflow

1. Confirm fit.

   • The source query is expensive and stable.
   • Consumers can accept stale data.
   • Refresh cadence, ownership, and failure behavior are clear.
   • PostgreSQL is the target database.

2. Design the materialized view.

   • Define the SQL query and output columns.
   • Add a unique column or unique column set if concurrent refresh is required.
   • Add indexes for consumer queries against the view.

3. Integrate with Django.

   • Create the view with RunSQL.
   • Represent it as an unmanaged model with managed = False.
   • Keep the unmanaged model fields aligned with the SQL output.
   • Make writes impossible at the application boundary.

4. Implement refresh.

   • Use REFRESH MATERIALIZED VIEW for simple refreshes.
   • Use REFRESH MATERIALIZED VIEW CONCURRENTLY only when the view is already populated and has a qualifying unique index.
   • Schedule refresh through a management command, task queue, or database job.

See materialized-view-patterns.md for migration, model, and refresh templates.

Safety Notes

• A materialized view returns stored data; it is not automatically current.
• Concurrent refresh avoids locking out reads but has prerequisites and still allows only one refresh at a time per view.
• Refreshing a large view can be a major database workload. Measure it separately from reads.

Verification

Validate the SQL against source tables, test the unmanaged model reads, prove refresh behavior, and measure read latency before/after.