Do you have tables with a column storing filenames? Long filenames with full path? If this is the case, then you probably realized how an index on this can be large. And when looking at the values sorted, you have seen the inefficiency of it: a big part of the full name is reapeated because it has the same prefix for files in the same (sub)directory. The 12cR2 Advanced Index Compression (COMPRESS ADVANCED LOW) does not help here because it only compresses identical values, like the basic compression of tables. With unique filenames, we cannot expect any benefit.

In Oracle we need to have a index on the foreign key column as soon as we have the intention to delete from the parent row, or a locking situation may block all transactions around the child table. PostgreSQL has a similar way to manage isolation, with MVCC, then do you think you also need to index the foreign keys? Here is a test that confirms that postgres does need to not lock the tables even without index on the foreign key.