In particular, make it possible to prove/refute "x IS NULL" and
"x IS NOT NULL" predicates from a clause involving a ScalarArrayOpExpr
even when we are unable or unwilling to deconstruct the expression
into an AND/OR tree. This avoids a former unexpected degradation of
plan quality when the size of an ARRAY[] expression or array constant
exceeded the arbitrary MAX_SAOP_ARRAY_SIZE limit. For IS-NULL proofs,
we don't really care about the values of the individual array elements;
at most, we care whether there are any, and for some common cases we
needn't even know that.
The main user-visible effect of this is to let the optimizer recognize
applicability of partial indexes with "x IS NOT NULL" predicates to
queries with "x IN (array)" clauses in some cases where it previously
failed to recognize that. The structure of predtest.c is such that a
bunch of related proofs will now also succeed, but they're probably
much less useful in the wild.
James Coleman, reviewed by David Rowley
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAAaqYe8yKSvzbyu8w-dThRs9aTFMwrFxn_BkTYeXgjqe3CbNjg@mail.gmail.com
Currently, if operator_predicate_proof() is given an operator clause like
"something op NULL", it just throws up its hands and reports it can't prove
anything. But we can often do better than that, if the operator is strict,
because then we know that the clause returns NULL overall. Depending on
whether we're trying to prove or refute something, and whether we need
weak or strong semantics for NULL, this may be enough to prove the
implication, especially when we rely on the standard rule that "false
implies anything". In particular, this lets us do something useful with
questions like "does X IN (1,3,5,NULL) imply X <= 5?" The null entry
in the IN list can effectively be ignored for this purpose, but the
proof rules were not previously smart enough to deduce that.
This patch is by me, but it owes something to previous work by
Amit Langote to try to solve problems of the form mentioned.
Thanks also to Emre Hasegeli and Ashutosh Bapat for review.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/3bad48fc-f257-c445-feeb-8a2b2fb622ba@lab.ntt.co.jp
Commit b08df9cab left things rather poorly documented as far as the
exact semantics of "clause_is_check" mode went. Also, that mode did
not really work correctly for predicate_refuted_by; although given the
lack of specification as to what it should do, as well as the lack
of any actual use-case, that's perhaps not surprising.
Rename "clause_is_check" to "weak" proof mode, and provide specifications
for what it should do. I defined weak refutation as meaning "truth of A
implies non-truth of B", which makes it possible to use the mode in the
part of relation_excluded_by_constraints that checks for mutually
contradictory WHERE clauses. Fix up several places that did things wrong
for that definition. (As far as I can see, these errors would only lead
to failure-to-prove, not incorrect claims of proof, making them not
serious bugs even aside from the fact that v10 contains no use of this
mode. So there seems no need for back-patching.)
In addition, teach predicate_refuted_by_recurse that it can use
predicate_implied_by_recurse after all when processing a strong NOT-clause,
so long as it asks for the correct proof strength. This is an optimization
that could have been included in commit b08df9cab, but wasn't.
Also, simplify and generalize the logic that checks for whether nullness of
the argument of IS [NOT] NULL would force overall nullness of the predicate
or clause. (This results in a change in the partition_prune test's output,
as it is now able to prune an all-nulls partition that it did not recognize
before.)
In passing, in PartConstraintImpliedByRelConstraint, remove bogus
conversion of the constraint list to explicit-AND form and then right back
again; that accomplished nothing except forcing a useless extra level of
recursion inside predicate_implied_by.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/5983.1520487191@sss.pgh.pa.us
The predicate-proof code in predtest.c is a bit hard to test as-is:
you have to construct a query whose plan changes depending on the success
of a test, and in tests that have been around for awhile, it's always
possible that the plan shape is now being determined by some other factor.
Our existing regression tests aren't doing real well at providing full
code coverage of predtest.c, either. So, let's add a small test module
that allows directly inspecting the results of predicate_implied_by()
and predicate_refuted_by() for arbitrary boolean expressions.
I chose the set of tests committed here in order to get reasonably
complete code coverage of predtest.c just from running this test
module, and to cover some cases called out as being interesting in
the existing comments. We might want to add more later. But this
set already shows a few cases where perhaps things could be improved.
Indeed, this exercise proves that predicate_refuted_by() is buggy for
the case of clause_is_check = true, though fortunately we aren't using
that case anywhere yet. I'll look into doing something about that in
a separate commit. For now, just memorialize the current behavior.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/5983.1520487191@sss.pgh.pa.us
