This patch provides a new implementation of the logic added by commit
137805f89 and later removed by 77ba61080. It differs from the original
primarily in expending much less effort per joinrel in large queries,
which it accomplishes by doing most of the matching work once per query not
once per joinrel. Hopefully, it's also less buggy and better commented.
The never-documented enable_fkey_estimates GUC remains gone.
There remains work to be done to make the selectivity estimates account
for nulls in FK referencing columns; but that was true of the original
patch as well. We may be able to address this point later in beta.
In the meantime, any error should be in the direction of overestimating
rather than underestimating joinrel sizes, which seems like the direction
we want to err in.
Tomas Vondra and Tom Lane
Discussion: <31041.1465069446@sss.pgh.pa.us>
The main point of doing this is to allow the cutoff to be set very small,
even zero, to allow parallel-query behavior to be tested on relatively
small tables such as we typically use in the regression tests. But it
might be of use to users too. The number-of-workers scaling behavior in
create_plain_partial_paths() is pretty ad-hoc and subject to change, so
we won't expose anything about that, but the notion of not considering
parallel query at all for tables below size X seems reasonably stable.
Amit Kapila, per a suggestion from me
Discussion: <17170.1465830165@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Commit b12fd41c6 added a "reltarget_has_non_vars" field to RelOptInfo,
but failed to maintain it accurately. Since its only purpose was to skip
calls to has_parallel_hazard() in the simple case where a rel's targetlist
is all Vars, and that call is really pretty cheap in that case anyway, it
seems like this is just a case of premature optimization. Let's drop the
flag and do the calls unconditionally until it's proven that we need more
smarts here.
Such paths are unsafe. To make it cheaper to detect when this case
applies, track whether a relation's default PathTarget contains any
non-Vars. In most cases, the answer will be no, which enables us to
determine cheaply that the target list for a proposed path is
parallel-safe. However, subquery pull-up can create cases that
require us to inspect the target list more carefully.
Amit Kapila, reviewed by me.
Fix a couple of overlooked uses of "degree" terminology. Make the parallel
worker count selection logic in create_plain_partial_paths more robust (in
particular, it failed with max_parallel_workers_per_gather set to zero).
This terminology provoked widespread complaints. So, instead, rename
the GUC max_parallel_degree to max_parallel_workers_per_gather
(leaving room for a possible future GUC max_parallel_workers that acts
as a system-wide limit), and rename the parallel_degree reloption to
parallel_workers. Rename structure members to match.
These changes create a dump/restore hazard for users of PostgreSQL
9.6beta1 who have set the reloption (or applied the GUC using ALTER
USER or ALTER DATABASE).
This commit reverts 137805f89 as well as the associated commits 015e88942,
5306df283, and 68d704edb. We found multiple bugs in this feature, and
there was concern about possible planner slowdown (though to be fair,
exhibiting a very large slowdown proved difficult). The way forward
requires a considerable rewrite, which may or may not be possible to
accomplish in time for beta2. In my judgment reviewing the rewrite will
be easier to accomplish starting from a clean slate, so let's temporarily
revert what's there now. This also leaves us in a safe state if it turns
out to be necessary to postpone the rewrite to the next development cycle.
Discussion: <20160429102531.GA13701@huehner.biz>
Discussion is still underway as to whether to revert the entire patch
that added this function, but that discussion may not conclude before
beta1. So, in the meantime, let's do at least this much.
David Rowley
Now that Paths have their own rows field, print that rather than
the parent relation's rowcount.
Show the relid sets associated with Paths using table names rather
than numbers; since this code is able to print simple Var references
using table names, it seems a bit silly that print_relids can't.
Print the cheapest_parameterized_paths list for a RelOptInfo, and
include information about a parameterized path's required_outer rels.
Noted while trying to use this feature to debug Alexander Kirkouski's
recent bug report.
We mustn't run generate_gather_paths() during add_paths_to_joinrel(),
because that function can be invoked multiple times for the same target
joinrel. Not only is it wasteful to build GatherPaths repeatedly, but
a later add_partial_path() could delete the partial path that a previously
created GatherPath depends on. Instead establish the convention that we
do generate_gather_paths() for a rel only just before set_cheapest().
The code was accidentally not broken for baserels, because as of today there
never is more than one partial path for a baserel. But that assumption
obviously has a pretty short half-life, so move the generate_gather_paths()
calls for those cases as well.
Also add some generic comments explaining how and why this all works.
Per fuzz testing by Andreas Seltenreich.
Report: <871t5pgwdt.fsf@credativ.de>
Given a three-or-more-way equivalence class, such as X.Y = Y.Y = Z.Z,
it was possible for the planner to omit one of the quals needed to
enforce that all members of the equivalence class are actually equal.
This only happened in the case of a parameterized join node for two
of the relations, that is a plan tree like
Nested Loop
-> Scan X
-> Nested Loop
-> Scan Y
-> Scan Z
Filter: Z.Z = X.X
The eclass machinery normally expects to apply X.X = Y.Y when those
two relations are joined, but in this shape of plan tree they aren't
joined until the top node --- and, if the lower nested loop is marked
as parameterized by X, the top node will assume that the relevant eclass
condition(s) got pushed down into the lower node. On the other hand,
the scan of Z assumes that it's only responsible for constraining Z.Z
to match any one of the other eclass members. So one or another of
the required quals sometimes fell between the cracks, depending on
whether consideration of the eclass in get_joinrel_parampathinfo()
for the lower nested loop chanced to generate X.X = Y.Y or X.X = Z.Z
as the appropriate constraint there. If it generated the latter,
it'd erroneously suppose that the Z scan would take care of matters.
To fix, force X.X = Y.Y to be generated and applied at that join node
when this case occurs.
This is *extremely* hard to hit in practice, because various planner
behaviors conspire to mask the problem; starting with the fact that the
planner doesn't really like to generate a parameterized plan of the
above shape. (It might have been impossible to hit it before we
tweaked things to allow this plan shape for star-schema cases.) Many
thanks to Alexander Kirkouski for submitting a reproducible test case.
The bug can be demonstrated in all branches back to 9.2 where parameterized
paths were introduced, so back-patch that far.
Change max_parallel_degree default from 0 to 2. It is possible that
this is not a good idea, or that we should go with 1 worker rather
than 2, but we won't find out without trying it. Along the way,
reword the documentation for max_parallel_degree a little bit to
hopefully make it more clear.
Discussion: 20160420174631.3qjjhpwsvvx5bau5@alap3.anarazel.de
Now indexes (but only B-tree for now) can contain "extra" column(s) which
doesn't participate in index structure, they are just stored in leaf
tuples. It allows to use index only scan by using single index instead
of two or more indexes.
Author: Anastasia Lubennikova with minor editorializing by me
Reviewers: David Rowley, Peter Geoghegan, Jeff Janes
The code that estimates what parallel degree should be uesd for the
scan of a relation is currently rather stupid, so add a parallel_degree
reloption that can be used to override the planner's rather limited
judgement.
Julien Rouhaud, reviewed by David Rowley, James Sewell, Amit Kapila,
and me. Some further hacking by me.
We still use replacement selection for the first run of the sort only
and only when the number of tuples is relatively small. Otherwise,
the first run, and subsequent runs in all cases, are produced using
quicksort. This tends to be faster except perhaps for very small
amounts of working memory.
Peter Geoghegan, reviewed by Tomas Vondra, Jeff Janes, Mithun Cy,
Greg Stark, and me.
In cases where joins use multiple columns we currently assess each join
separately causing gross mis-estimates for join cardinality.
This patch adds use of FK information for the first time into the
planner. When FKs are present and we have multi-column join information,
plan estimates will be drastically improved. Cases with multiple FKs
are handled, though partial matches are ignored currently.
Net effect is substantial performance improvements for joins in many
common cases. Additional planning time is isolated to cases that are
currently performing poorly, measured at 0.08 - 0.15 ms.
Please watch for planner performance regressions; circumstances seem
unlikely but the law of unintended consequences may apply somewhen.
Additional complex tests welcome to prove this before release.
Tests can be performed using SET enable_fkey_estimates = on | off
using scripts provided during Hackers discussions, message id:
552335D9.3090707@2ndquadrant.com
Authors: Tomas Vondra and David Rowley
Reviewed and tested by Simon Riggs, adding comments only
Previously, the planner would reject an index-only scan if any restriction
clause for its table used a column not available from the index, even
if that restriction clause would later be dropped from the plan entirely
because it's implied by the index's predicate. This is a fairly common
situation for partial indexes because predicates using columns not included
in the index are often the most useful kind of predicate, and we have to
duplicate (or at least imply) the predicate in the WHERE clause in order
to get the index to be considered at all. So index-only scans were
essentially unavailable with such partial indexes.
To fix, we have to do detection of implied-by-predicate clauses much
earlier in the planner. This patch puts it in check_index_predicates
(nee check_partial_indexes), meaning it gets done for every partial index,
whereas we previously only considered this issue at createplan time,
so that the work was only done for an index actually selected for use.
That could result in a noticeable planning slowdown for queries against
tables with many partial indexes. However, testing suggested that there
isn't really a significant cost, especially not with reasonable numbers
of partial indexes. We do get a small additional benefit, which is that
cost_index is more accurate since it correctly discounts the evaluation
cost of clauses that will be removed. We can also avoid considering such
clauses as potential indexquals, which saves useless matching cycles in
the case where the predicate columns aren't in the index, and prevents
generating bogus plans that double-count the clause's selectivity when
the columns are in the index.
Tomas Vondra and Kyotaro Horiguchi, reviewed by Kevin Grittner and
Konstantin Knizhnik, and whacked around a little by me
cost_subplan() supposed that the given subplan must have plan_rows > 0,
which as far as I can tell was true until recent refactoring of the
code in createplan.c; but now that code allows the Result for a provably
empty subquery to have plan_rows = 0. Rather than undo that change,
put in a clamp to prevent zero divide.
get_cheapest_fractional_path() likewise supposed that best_path->rows > 0.
This assumption has been wrong for longer. It's actually harmless given
IEEE float math, because a positive value divided by zero gives +Infinity
and compare_fractional_path_costs() will do the right thing with that.
Still, best not to assume that.
final_cost_nestloop() also seems to have some risks in this area, so
borrow the clamping logic already present in the mergejoin cost functions.
Lastly, remove unnecessary clamp_row_est() in planner.c's calls to
get_number_of_groups(). The only thing that function does with path_rows
is pass it to estimate_num_groups() which already has an internal clamp,
so we don't need the extra call; and if we did, the callers are arguably
the wrong place for it anyway.
First two items reported by Piotr Stefaniak, the others are products
of my nosing around for similar problems. No back-patch since there's
no evidence that problems arise in the back branches.
Parallel workers can now partially aggregate the data and pass the
transition values back to the leader, which can combine the partial
results to produce the final answer.
David Rowley, based on earlier work by Haribabu Kommi. Reviewed by
Álvaro Herrera, Tomas Vondra, Amit Kapila, James Sewell, and me.
In commit 19a541143a I did not make PathTarget a subtype of Node,
and embedded a RelOptInfo's reltarget directly into it rather than having
a separately-allocated Node. In hindsight that was misguided
micro-optimization, enabled by the fact that at that point we didn't have
any Paths with custom PathTargets. Now that PathTarget processing has
been fleshed out some more, it's easier to see that it's better to have
PathTarget as an indepedent Node type, even if it does cost us one more
palloc to create a RelOptInfo. So change it while we still can.
This commit just changes the representation, without doing anything more
interesting than that.
All along, this function should have treated WindowFuncs in a manner
similar to Aggrefs, ie with an option whether or not to recurse into them.
By not considering the case, it was always recursing, which is OK for most
callers (although I suspect that the case in prepare_sort_from_pathkeys
might represent a bug). But now we need return-without-recursing behavior
as well. There are also more than a few callers that should never see a
WindowFunc, and now we'll get some error checking on that.
In commit 1d97c19a0f and later c1d9579dd8, we extended
pull_var_clause's API by adding enum-type arguments. That's sort of a pain
to maintain, though, because it means every time we add a new behavior we
must touch every last one of the call sites, even if there's a reasonable
default behavior that most of them could use. Let's switch over to using a
bitmask of flags, instead; that seems more maintainable and might save a
nanosecond or two as well. This commit changes no behavior in itself,
though I'm going to follow it up with one that does add a new behavior.
In passing, remove flatten_tlist(), which has not been used since 9.1
and would otherwise need the same API changes.
Removing these enums means that optimizer/tlist.h no longer needs to
depend on optimizer/var.h. Changing that caused a number of C files to
need addition of #include "optimizer/var.h" (probably we can thank old
runs of pgrminclude for that); but on balance it seems like a good change
anyway.
I've been saying we needed to do this for more than five years, and here it
finally is. This patch removes the ever-growing tangle of spaghetti logic
that grouping_planner() used to use to try to identify the best plan for
post-scan/join query steps. Now, there is (nearly) independent
consideration of each execution step, and entirely separate construction of
Paths to represent each of the possible ways to do that step. We choose
the best Path or set of Paths using the same add_path() logic that's been
used inside query_planner() for years.
In addition, this patch removes the old restriction that subquery_planner()
could return only a single Plan. It now returns a RelOptInfo containing a
set of Paths, just as query_planner() does, and the parent query level can
use each of those Paths as the basis of a SubqueryScanPath at its level.
This allows finding some optimizations that we missed before, wherein a
subquery was capable of returning presorted data and thereby avoiding a
sort in the parent level, making the overall cost cheaper even though
delivering sorted output was not the cheapest plan for the subquery in
isolation. (A couple of regression test outputs change in consequence of
that. However, there is very little change in visible planner behavior
overall, because the point of this patch is not to get immediate planning
benefits but to create the infrastructure for future improvements.)
There is a great deal left to do here. This patch unblocks a lot of
planner work that was basically impractical in the old code structure,
such as allowing FDWs to implement remote aggregation, or rewriting
plan_set_operations() to allow consideration of multiple implementation
orders for set operations. (The latter will likely require a full
rewrite of plan_set_operations(); what I've done here is only to fix it
to return Paths not Plans.) I have also left unfinished some localized
refactoring in createplan.c and planner.c, because it was not necessary
to get this patch to a working state.
Thanks to Robert Haas, David Rowley, and Amit Kapila for review.
In commit 19a541143a I replaced RelOptInfo.width with
RelOptInfo.reltarget.width, but I missed updating debug_print_rel()
for that because it's not compiled by default.
Reported by Salvador Fandino, patch by Michael Paquier.
This is basically a bug fix; the old code assumes that a ForeignScan
is always parallel-safe, but for postgres_fdw, for example, this is
definitely false. It should be true for file_fdw, though, since a
worker can read a file from the filesystem just as well as any other
backend process.
Original patch by Thomas Munro. Documentation, and changes to the
comments, by me.
Up to now, there's been an assumption that all Paths for a given relation
compute the same output column set (targetlist). However, there are good
reasons to remove that assumption. For example, an indexscan on an
expression index might be able to return the value of an expensive function
"for free". While we have the ability to generate such a plan today in
simple cases, we don't have a way to model that it's cheaper than a plan
that computes the function from scratch, nor a way to create such a plan
in join cases (where the function computation would normally happen at
the topmost join node). Also, we need this so that we can have Paths
representing post-scan/join steps, where the targetlist may well change
from one step to the next. Therefore, invent a "struct PathTarget"
representing the columns we expect a plan step to emit. It's convenient
to include the output tuple width and tlist evaluation cost in this struct,
and there will likely be additional fields in future.
While Path nodes that actually do have custom outputs will need their own
PathTargets, it will still be true that most Paths for a given relation
will compute the same tlist. To reduce the overhead added by this patch,
keep a "default PathTarget" in RelOptInfo, and allow Paths that compute
that column set to just point to their parent RelOptInfo's reltarget.
(In the patch as committed, actually every Path is like that, since we
do not yet have any cases of custom PathTargets.)
I took this opportunity to provide some more-honest costing of
PlaceHolderVar evaluation. Up to now, the assumption that "scan/join
reltargetlists have cost zero" was applied not only to Vars, where it's
reasonable, but also PlaceHolderVars where it isn't. Now, we add the eval
cost of a PlaceHolderVar's expression to the first plan level where it can
be computed, by including it in the PathTarget cost field and adding that
to the cost estimates for Paths. This isn't perfect yet but it's much
better than before, and there is a way forward to improve it more. This
costing change affects the join order chosen for a couple of the regression
tests, changing expected row ordering.
The core innovation of this patch is the introduction of the concept
of a partial path; that is, a path which if executed in parallel will
generate a subset of the output rows in each process. Gathering a
partial path produces an ordinary (complete) path. This allows us to
generate paths for parallel joins by joining a partial path for one
side (which at the baserel level is currently always a Partial Seq
Scan) to an ordinary path on the other side. This is subject to
various restrictions at present, especially that this strategy seems
unlikely to be sensible for merge joins, so only nested loops and
hash joins paths are generated.
This also allows an Append node to be pushed below a Gather node in
the case of a partitioned table.
Testing revealed that early versions of this patch made poor decisions
in some cases, which turned out to be caused by the fact that the
original cost model for Parallel Seq Scan wasn't very good. So this
patch tries to make some modest improvements in that area.
There is much more to be done in the area of generating good parallel
plans in all cases, but this seems like a useful step forward.
Patch by me, reviewed by Dilip Kumar and Amit Kapila.
This patch reduces pg_am to just two columns, a name and a handler
function. All the data formerly obtained from pg_am is now provided
in a C struct returned by the handler function. This is similar to
the designs we've adopted for FDWs and tablesample methods. There
are multiple advantages. For one, the index AM's support functions
are now simple C functions, making them faster to call and much less
error-prone, since the C compiler can now check function signatures.
For another, this will make it far more practical to define index access
methods in installable extensions.
A disadvantage is that SQL-level code can no longer see attributes
of index AMs; in particular, some of the crosschecks in the opr_sanity
regression test are no longer possible from SQL. We've addressed that
by adding a facility for the index AM to perform such checks instead.
(Much more could be done in that line, but for now we're content if the
amvalidate functions more or less replace what opr_sanity used to do.)
We might also want to expose some sort of reporting functionality, but
this patch doesn't do that.
Alexander Korotkov, reviewed by Petr Jelínek, and rather heavily
editorialized on by me.
When use_remote_estimate is enabled, consider adding ORDER BY to the
query we sending to the remote server so that we can use that ordered
data for a merge join. Commit f18c944b61
arranges to push down the query pathkeys, which seems like the case
mostly likely to be a win, but testing shows this can sometimes win,
too.
For a regular table, we know which indexes are present and therefore
test whether the ordering provided by each such index is useful. Here,
we take the opposite approach: guess what orderings would be useful if
they could be generated cheaply, and then ask the remote side what those
will cost.
Ashutosh Bapat, with very substantial cosmetic revisions by me. Also
reviewed by Rushabh Lathia.
I originally modeled this data structure on SpecialJoinInfo, but after
commit acfcd45cac that looks like a pretty poor decision.
All we really need is relid sets identifying laterally-referenced rels;
and most of the time, what we want to know about includes indirect lateral
references, a case the LateralJoinInfo data was unsuited to compute with
any efficiency. The previous commit redefined RelOptInfo.lateral_relids
as the transitive closure of lateral references, so that it easily supports
checking indirect references. For the places where we really do want just
direct references, add a new RelOptInfo field direct_lateral_relids, which
is easily set up as a copy of lateral_relids before we perform the
transitive closure calculation. Then we can just drop lateral_info_list
and LateralJoinInfo and the supporting code. This makes the planner's
handling of lateral references noticeably more efficient, and shorter too.
Such a change can't be back-patched into stable branches for fear of
breaking extensions that might be looking at the planner's data structures;
but it seems not too late to push it into 9.5, so I've done so.
More fuzz testing by Andreas Seltenreich exposed that the planner did not
cope well with chains of lateral references. If relation X references Y
laterally, and Y references Z laterally, then we will have to scan X on the
inside of a nestloop with Z, so for all intents and purposes X is laterally
dependent on Z too. The planner did not understand this and would generate
intermediate joins that could not be used. While that was usually harmless
except for wasting some planning cycles, under the right circumstances it
would lead to "failed to build any N-way joins" or "could not devise a
query plan" planner failures.
To fix that, convert the existing per-relation lateral_relids and
lateral_referencers relid sets into their transitive closures; that is,
they now show all relations on which a rel is directly or indirectly
laterally dependent. This not only fixes the chained-reference problem
but allows some of the relevant tests to be made substantially simpler
and faster, since they can be reduced to simple bitmap manipulations
instead of searches of the LateralJoinInfo list.
Also, when a PlaceHolderVar that is due to be evaluated at a join contains
lateral references, we should treat those references as indirect lateral
dependencies of each of the join's base relations. This prevents us from
trying to join any individual base relations to the lateral reference
source before the join is formed, which again cannot work.
Andreas' testing also exposed another oversight in the "dangerous
PlaceHolderVar" test added in commit 85e5e222b1. Simply rejecting
unsafe join paths in joinpath.c is insufficient, because in some cases
we will end up rejecting *all* possible paths for a particular join, again
leading to "could not devise a query plan" failures. The restriction has
to be known also to join_is_legal and its cohort functions, so that they
will not select a join for which that will happen. I chose to move the
supporting logic into joinrels.c where the latter functions are.
Back-patch to 9.3 where LATERAL support was introduced.
While convincing myself that commit 7e19db0c09 would solve both of
the problems recently reported by Andreas Seltenreich, I realized that
add_paths_to_joinrel's handling of LATERAL restrictions could be made
noticeably simpler and faster if we were to retain the minimum possible
parameterization for each joinrel (that is, the set of relids supplying
unsatisfied lateral references in it). We already retain that for
baserels, in RelOptInfo.lateral_relids, so we can use that field for
joinrels too.
I re-pgindent'd the files touched here, which affects some unrelated
comments.
This is, I believe, just a minor optimization not a bug fix, so no
back-patch.
It was possible for the planner to decide to join a LATERAL subquery to
the outer side of an outer join before the outer join itself is completed.
Normally that's fine because of the associativity rules, but it doesn't
work if the subquery contains a lateral reference to the inner side of the
outer join. In such a situation the outer join *must* be done first.
join_is_legal() missed this consideration and would allow the join to be
attempted, but the actual path-building code correctly decided that no
valid join path could be made, sometimes leading to planner errors such as
"failed to build any N-way joins".
Per report from Andreas Seltenreich. Back-patch to 9.3 where LATERAL
support was added.
Add a new flag, consider_parallel, to each RelOptInfo, indicating
whether a plan for that relation could conceivably be run inside of
a parallel worker. Right now, we're pretty conservative: for example,
it might be possible to defer applying a parallel-restricted qual
in a worker, and later do it in the leader, but right now we just
don't try to parallelize access to that relation. That's probably
the right decision in most cases, anyway.
Using the new flag, generate parallel sequential scan plans for plain
baserels, meaning that we now have parallel sequential scan in
PostgreSQL. The logic here is pretty unsophisticated right now: the
costing model probably isn't right in detail, and we can't push joins
beneath Gather nodes, so the number of plans that can actually benefit
from this is pretty limited right now. Lots more work is needed.
Nevertheless, it seems time to enable this functionality so that all
this code can actually be tested easily by users and developers.
Note that, if you wish to test this functionality, it will be
necessary to set max_parallel_degree to a value greater than the
default of 0. Once a few more loose ends have been tidied up here, we
might want to consider changing the default value of this GUC, but
I'm leaving it alone for now.
Along the way, fix a bug in cost_gather: the previous coding thought
that a Gather node's transfer overhead should be costed on the basis of
the relation size rather than the number of tuples that actually need
to be passed off to the leader.
Patch by me, reviewed in earlier versions by Amit Kapila.
In addition, this path fills in a number of missing bits and pieces in
the parallel infrastructure. Paths and plans now have a parallel_aware
flag indicating whether whatever parallel-aware logic they have should
be engaged. It is believed that we will need this flag for a number of
path/plan types, not just sequential scans, which is why the flag is
generic rather than part of the SeqScan structures specifically.
Also, execParallel.c now gives parallel nodes a chance to initialize
their PlanState nodes from the DSM during parallel worker startup.
Amit Kapila, with a fair amount of adjustment by me. Review of previous
patch versions by Haribabu Kommi and others.
A Gather executor node runs any number of copies of a plan in an equal
number of workers and merges all of the results into a single tuple
stream. It can also run the plan itself, if the workers are
unavailable or haven't started up yet. It is intended to work with
the Partial Seq Scan node which will be added in future commits.
It could also be used to implement parallel query of a different sort
by itself, without help from Partial Seq Scan, if the single_copy mode
is used. In that mode, a worker executes the plan, and the parallel
leader does not, merely collecting the worker's results. So, a Gather
node could be inserted into a plan to split the execution of that plan
across two processes. Nested Gather nodes aren't currently supported,
but we might want to add support for that in the future.
There's nothing in the planner to actually generate Gather nodes yet,
so it's not quite time to break out the champagne. But we're getting
close.
Amit Kapila. Some designs suggestions were provided by me, and I also
reviewed the patch. Single-copy mode, documentation, and other minor
changes also by me.
Previously, a function call appearing at the top level of WHERE had a
hard-wired selectivity estimate of 0.3333333, a kludge conveniently dated
in the source code itself to July 1992. The expectation at the time was
that somebody would soon implement estimator support functions analogous
to those for operators; but no such code has appeared, nor does it seem
likely to in the near future. We do have an alternative solution though,
at least for immutable functions on single relations: creating an
expression index on the function call will allow ANALYZE to gather stats
about the function's selectivity. But the code in clause_selectivity()
failed to make use of such data even if it exists.
Refactor so that that will happen. I chose to make it try this technique
for any clause type for which clause_selectivity() doesn't have a special
case, not just functions. To avoid adding unnecessary overhead in the
common case where we don't learn anything new, make selfuncs.c provide an
API that hooks directly to examine_variable() and then var_eq_const(),
rather than the previous coding which laboriously constructed an OpExpr
only so that it could be expensively deconstructed again.
I preserved the behavior that the default estimate for a function call
is 0.3333333. (For any other expression node type, it's 0.5, as before.)
I had originally thought to make the default be 0.5 across the board, but
changing a default estimate that's survived for twenty-three years seems
like something not to do without a lot more testing than I care to put
into it right now.
Per a complaint from Jehan-Guillaume de Rorthais. Back-patch into 9.5,
but not further, at least for the moment.
One of the changes I made in commit 8703059c6b turns out not to have
been such a good idea: we still need the exception in join_is_legal() that
allows a join if both inputs already overlap the RHS of the special join
we're checking. Otherwise we can miss valid plans, and might indeed fail
to find a plan at all, as in recent report from Andreas Seltenreich.
That code was added way back in commit c17117649b, but I failed to
include a regression test case then; my bad. Put it back with a better
explanation, and a test this time. The logic does end up a bit different
than before though: I now believe it's appropriate to make this check
first, thereby allowing such a case whether or not we'd consider the
previous SJ(s) to commute with this one. (Presumably, we already decided
they did; but it was confusing to have this consideration in the middle
of the code that was handling the other case.)
Back-patch to all active branches, like the previous patch.
