the number of rows likely to be produced by a query such as
SELECT * FROM t1 LEFT JOIN t2 USING (key) WHERE t2.key IS NULL;
What this is doing is selecting for t1 rows with no match in t2, and thus
it may produce a significant number of rows even if the t2.key table column
contains no nulls at all. 8.2 thinks the table column's null fraction is
relevant and thus may estimate no rows out, which results in terrible plans
if there are more joins above this one. A proper fix for this will involve
passing much more information about the context of a clause to the selectivity
estimator functions than we ever have. There's no time left to write such a
patch for 8.3, and it wouldn't be back-patchable into 8.2 anyway. Instead,
put in an ad-hoc test to defeat the normal table-stats-based estimation when
an IS NULL test is evaluated at an outer join, and just use a constant
estimate instead --- I went with 0.5 for lack of a better idea. This won't
catch every case but it will catch the typical ways of writing such queries,
and it seems unlikely to make things worse for other queries.
clauses in which one side or the other references both sides of the join
cannot be removed as redundant, because that expression won't have been
constrained below the join. Per report from Sergey Burladyan.
cheapest-startup-cost innerjoin indexscans, and make joinpath.c consider
both of these (when different) as the inside of a nestloop join. The
original design was based on the assumption that indexscan paths always
have negligible startup cost, and so total cost is the only important
figure of merit; an assumption that's obviously broken by bitmap
indexscans. This oversight could lead to choosing poor plans in cases
where fast-start behavior is more important than total cost, such as
LIMIT and IN queries. 8.1-vintage brain fade exposed by an example from
Chuck D.
competing alternatives for indexes to use in a bitmap scan. The former
coding took estimated selectivity as an overriding factor, causing it to
sometimes choose indexes that were much slower to scan than ones with a
slightly worse selectivity. It was also too narrow-minded about which
combinations of indexes to consider ANDing. The rewrite makes it pay more
attention to index scan cost than selectivity; this seems sane since it's
impossible to have very bad selectivity with low cost, whereas the reverse
isn't true. Also, we now consider each index alone, as well as adding
each index to an AND-group led by each prior index, for a total of about
O(N^2) rather than O(N) combinations considered. This makes the results
much less dependent on the exact order in which the indexes are
considered. It's still a lot cheaper than an O(2^N) exhaustive search.
A prefilter step eliminates all but the cheapest of those indexes using
the same set of WHERE conditions, to keep the effective value of N down in
scenarios where the DBA has created lots of partially-redundant indexes.
considered when it is necessary to do so because of a join-order restriction
(that is, an outer-join or IN-subselect construct). The former coding was a
bit ad-hoc and inconsistent, and it missed some cases, as exposed by Mario
Weilguni's recent bug report. His specific problem was that an IN could be
turned into a "clauseless" join due to constant-propagation removing the IN's
joinclause, and if the IN's subselect involved more than one relation and
there was more than one such IN linking to the same upper relation, then the
only valid join orders involve "bushy" plans but we would fail to consider the
specific paths needed to get there. (See the example case added to the join
regression test.) On examining the code I wonder if there weren't some other
problem cases too; in particular it seems that GEQO was defending against a
different set of corner cases than the main planner was. There was also an
efficiency problem, in that when we did realize we needed a clauseless join
because of an IN, we'd consider clauseless joins against every other relation
whether this was sensible or not. It seems a better design is to use the
outer-join and in-clause lists as a backup heuristic, just as the rule of
joining only where there are joinclauses is a heuristic: we'll join two
relations if they have a usable joinclause *or* this might be necessary to
satisfy an outer-join or IN-clause join order restriction. I refactored the
code to have just one place considering this instead of three, and made sure
that it covered all the cases that any of them had been considering.
Backpatch as far as 8.1 (which has only the IN-clause form of the disease).
By rights 8.0 and 7.4 should have the bug too, but they accidentally fail
to fail, because the joininfo structure used in those releases preserves some
memory of there having once been a joinclause between the inner and outer
sides of an IN, and so it leads the code in the right direction anyway.
I'll be conservative and not touch them.
that overlap an outer join's min_righthand but aren't fully contained in it,
to support joining within the RHS after having performed an outer join that
can commute with this one. Aside from the direct fix in make_join_rel(),
fix has_join_restriction() and GEQO's desirable_join() to consider this
possibility. Per report from Ian Harding.
hash joins with the estimated-larger relation on the inside. There are
several cases where doing that makes perfect sense, and in cases where it
doesn't, the regular cost computation really ought to be able to figure that
out. Make some marginal tweaks in said computation to try to get results
approximating reality a bit better. Per an example from Shane Ambler.
Also, fix an oversight in the original patch to add seq_page_cost: the costs
of spilling a hash join to disk should be scaled by seq_page_cost.
are all in new-in-8.2 logic associated with indexability of ScalarArrayOpExpr
(IN-clauses) or amortization of indexscan costs across repeated indexscans
on the inside of a nestloop. In particular:
Fix some logic errors in the estimation for multiple scans induced by a
ScalarArrayOpExpr indexqual.
Include a small cost component in bitmap index scans to reflect the costs of
manipulating the bitmap itself; this is mainly to prevent a bitmap scan from
appearing to have the same cost as a plain indexscan for fetching a single
tuple.
Also add a per-index-scan-startup CPU cost component; while prior releases
were clearly too pessimistic about the cost of repeated indexscans, the
original 8.2 coding allowed the cost of an indexscan to effectively go to zero
if repeated often enough, which is overly optimistic.
Pay some attention to index correlation when estimating costs for a nestloop
inner indexscan: this is significant when the plan fetches multiple heap
tuples per iteration, since high correlation means those tuples are probably
on the same or adjacent heap pages.
joinclause doesn't use any outer-side vars) requires a "bushy" plan to be
created. The normal heuristic to avoid joins with no joinclause has to be
overridden in that case. Problem is new in 8.2; before that we forced the
outer join order anyway. Per example from Teodor.
accurately: we have to distinguish the effects of the join's own ON
clauses from the effects of pushed-down clauses. Failing to do so
was a quick hack long ago, but it's time to be smarter. Per example
from Thomas H.
outer joins. Originally it was only looking for overlap of the righthand
side of a left join, but we have to do it on the lefthand side too.
Per example from Jean-Pierre Pelletier.
tables in the query compete for cache space, not just the one we are
currently costing an indexscan for. This seems more realistic, and it
definitely will help in examples recently exhibited by Stefan
Kaltenbrunner. To get the total size of all the tables involved, we must
tweak the handling of 'append relations' a bit --- formerly we looked up
information about the child tables on-the-fly during set_append_rel_pathlist,
but it needs to be done before we start doing any cost estimation, so
push it into the add_base_rels_to_query scan.
functions in its targetlist, to avoid introducing multiple evaluations
of volatile functions that textually appear only once. This is a
slightly tighter version of Jaime Casanova's recent patch.
mergejoin possibility where the inner rel was less well sorted than
the outer (ie, it matches some but not all of the merge clauses that
can work with the outer), if the inner path in question is also the
overall cheapest path for its rel. This is an old bug, but I'm not
sure it's worth back-patching, because it's such a corner case.
Noted while investigating a test case from Peter Hardman.
subquery's pathkey is a RelabelType applied to something that appears
in the subquery's output; for example where the subquery returns a
varchar Var and the sort order is shown as that Var coerced to text.
This comes up because varchar doesn't have its own sort operator.
Per example from Peter Hardman.
same data type and same typmod, we show that typmod as the output
typmod, rather than generic -1. This responds to several complaints
over the past few years about UNIONs unexpectedly dropping length or
precision info.
(e.g. "INSERT ... VALUES (...), (...), ...") and elsewhere as allowed
by the spec. (e.g. similar to a FROM clause subselect). initdb required.
Joe Conway and Tom Lane.
effects in a nestloop inner indexscan, I had only dealt with plain index
scans and the index portion of bitmap scans. But there will be cache
benefits for the heap accesses of bitmap scans too, so fix
cost_bitmap_heap_scan() to account for that.
ScalarArrayOpExpr index quals: we were estimating the right total
number of rows returned, but treating the index-access part of the
cost as if a single scan were fetching that many consecutive index
tuples. Actually we should treat it as a multiple indexscan, and
if there are enough of 'em the Mackert-Lohman discount should kick in.
clauses containing no variables and no volatile functions. Such a clause
can be used as a one-time qual in a gating Result plan node, to suppress
plan execution entirely when it is false. Even when the clause is true,
putting it in a gating node wins by avoiding repeated evaluation of the
clause. In previous PG releases, query_planner() would do this for
pseudoconstant clauses appearing at the top level of the jointree, but
there was no ability to generate a gating Result deeper in the plan tree.
To fix it, get rid of the special case in query_planner(), and instead
process pseudoconstant clauses through the normal RestrictInfo qual
distribution mechanism. When a pseudoconstant clause is found attached to
a path node in create_plan(), pull it out and generate a gating Result at
that point. This requires special-casing pseudoconstants in selectivity
estimation and cost_qual_eval, but on the whole it's pretty clean.
It probably even makes the planner a bit faster than before for the normal
case of no pseudoconstants, since removing pull_constant_clauses saves one
useless traversal of the qual tree. Per gripe from Phil Frost.
choose_bitmap_and(). It was way too fuzzy --- per comment, it was meant to be
1% relative difference, but was actually coded as 0.01 absolute difference,
thus causing selectivities of say 0.001 and 0.000000000001 to be treated as
equal. I believe this thinko explains Maxim Boguk's recent complaint. While
we could change it to a relative test coded like compare_fuzzy_path_costs(),
there's a bigger problem here, which is that any fuzziness at all renders the
comparison function non-transitive, which could confuse qsort() to the point
of delivering completely wrong results. So forget the whole thing and just
do an exact comparison.
that the Mackert-Lohmann formula applies across all the repetitions of the
nestloop, not just each scan independently. We use the M-L formula to
estimate the number of pages fetched from the index as well as from the table;
that isn't what it was designed for, but it seems reasonably applicable
anyway. This makes large numbers of repetitions look much cheaper than
before, which accords with many reports we've received of overestimation
of the cost of a nestloop. Also, change the index access cost model to
charge random_page_cost per index leaf page touched, while explicitly
not counting anything for access to metapage or upper tree pages. This
may all need tweaking after we get some field experience, but in simple
tests it seems to be giving saner results than before. The main thing
is to get the infrastructure in place to let cost_index() and amcostestimate
functions take repeated scans into account at all. Per my recent proposal.
Note: this patch changes pg_proc.h, but I did not force initdb because
the changes are basically cosmetic --- the system does not look into
pg_proc to decide how to call an index amcostestimate function, and
there's no way to call such a function from SQL at all.
cost_nonsequential_access() is really totally inappropriate for its only
remaining use, namely estimating I/O costs in cost_sort(). The routine
was designed on the assumption that disk caching might eliminate the need
for some re-reads on a random basis, but there's nothing very random in
that sense about sort's access pattern --- it'll always be picking up the
oldest outputs. If we had a good fix on the effective cache size we
might consider charging zero for I/O unless the sort temp file size
exceeds it, but that's probably putting much too much faith in the
parameter. Instead just drop the logic in favor of a fixed compromise
between seq_page_cost and random_page_cost per page of sort I/O.
assumed that a sequential page fetch has cost 1.0. This patch doesn't
in itself change the system's behavior at all, but it opens the door to
people adopting other units of measurement for EXPLAIN costs. Also, if
we ever decide it's worth inventing per-tablespace access cost settings,
this change provides a workable intellectual framework for that.
deciding whether a potential additional indexscan is redundant or not. As now
coded, any use of a partial index that was already used in a previous AND arm
will be rejected as redundant. This might be overly restrictive, but not
considering the point at all is definitely bad, as per example in bug #2441
from Arjen van der Meijden. In particular, a clauseless scan of a partial
index was *never* considered redundant by the previous coding, and that's
surely wrong. Being more flexible would also require some consideration
of how not to double-count the index predicate's selectivity.
condition: when there are multiple possible index paths involving
ScalarArrayOpExprs, they are logically to be ANDed together not ORed.
This thinko was a direct consequence of trying to put the processing
inside generate_bitmap_or_paths(), which I now see was a bit too cute.
So pull it out and make the callers do it separately (there are only two
that need it anyway). Partially responds to bug #2441 from Arjen van der Meijden.
There are some additional infelicities exposed by his example, but they
are also in 8.1.x, while this mistake is not.
the union of its child relations as well. This might have been a good idea
when it was originally coded, but it's a fatally bad idea when inheritance is
being used for partitioning. It's better to have no stats at all than
completely misleading stats. Per report from Mark Liberman.
The bug arguably exists all the way back, but I've only patched HEAD and 8.1
because we weren't particularly trying to support partitioning before 8.1.
Eventually we ought to look at deriving union statistics instead of just
punting, but for now the drop kick looks good.
support both FOR UPDATE and FOR SHARE in one command, as well as both
NOWAIT and normal WAIT behavior. The more general code is actually
simpler and cleaner.
had a bad side-effect: it stopped finding plans that involved BitmapAnd
combinations of indexscans using both join and non-join conditions. Instead,
make choose_bitmap_and more aggressive about detecting redundancies between
BitmapOr subplans.
at least one join condition as an indexqual. Before bitmap indexscans, this
oversight didn't really cost much except for redundantly considering the
same join paths twice; but as of 8.1 it could result in silly bitmap scans
that would do the same BitmapOr twice and then BitmapAnd these together :-(
not likely ever to be implemented seeing it's been removed from SQL2003.
This allows getting rid of the 'filter' version of yylex() that we had in
parser.c, which should save at least a few microseconds in parsing.
with fixed merge order (fixed number of "tapes") was based on obsolete
assumptions, namely that tape drives are expensive. Since our "tapes"
are really just a couple of buffers, we can have a lot of them given
adequate workspace. This allows reduction of the number of merge passes
with consequent savings of I/O during large sorts.
Simon Riggs with some rework by Tom Lane
Var referencing the subselect output. While this case could possibly be made
to work, it seems not worth expending effort on. Per report from Magnus
Naeslund(f).
relations: fix the executor so that we can have an Append plan on the
inside of a nestloop and still pass down outer index keys to index scans
within the Append, then generate such plans as if they were regular
inner indexscans. This avoids the need to evaluate the outer relation
multiple times.
... in fact, it will be applied now in any query whatsoever. I'm still
a bit concerned about the cycles that might be expended in failed proof
attempts, but given that CE is turned off by default, it's the user's
choice whether to expend those cycles or not. (Possibly we should
change the simple bool constraint_exclusion parameter to something
more fine-grained?)
thereby sharing code with the inheritance case. This puts the UNION-ALL-view
approach to partitioned tables on par with inheritance, so far as constraint
exclusion is concerned: it works either way. (Still need to update the docs
to say so.) The definition of "simple UNION ALL" is a little simpler than
I would like --- basically the union arms can only be SELECT * FROM foo
--- but it's good enough for partitioned-table cases.
inheritance trees on-the-fly, which pretty well constrained us to considering
only one way of planning inheritance, expand inheritance sets during the
planner prep phase, and build a side data structure that can be consulted
later to find which RTEs are members of which inheritance sets. As proof of
concept, use the data structure to plan joins against inheritance sets more
efficiently: we can now use indexes on the set members in inner-indexscan
joins. (The generated plans could be improved further, but it'll take some
executor changes.) This data structure will also support handling UNION ALL
subqueries in the same way as inheritance sets, but that aspect of it isn't
finished yet.
requested sort order. It was assuming that build_index_pathkeys always
generates a pathkey per index column, which was not true if implied equality
deduction had determined that two index columns were effectively equated to
each other. Simplest fix seems to be to install an option that causes
build_index_pathkeys to support this behavior as well as the original one.
Per report from Brian Hirt.
and rely exclusively on the SQL type system to tell the difference between
the types. Prevent creation of invalid CIDR values via casting from INET
or set_masklen() --- both of these operations now silently zero any bits
to the right of the netmask. Remove duplicate CIDR comparison operators,
letting the type rely on the INET operators instead.
