and/or create plans for hypothetical situations; in particular, investigate
plans that would be generated using hypothetical indexes. This is a
heavily-rewritten version of the hooks proposed by Gurjeet Singh for his
Index Advisor project. In this formulation, the index advisor can be
entirely a loadable module instead of requiring a significant part to be
in the core backend, and plans can be generated for hypothetical indexes
without requiring the creation and rolling-back of system catalog entries.
The index advisor patch as-submitted is not compatible with these hooks,
but it needs significant work anyway due to other 8.2-to-8.3 planner
changes. With these hooks in the core backend, development of the advisor
can proceed as a pgfoundry project.
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.
is using mark/restore but not rewind or backward-scan capability. Insert a
materialize plan node between a mergejoin and its inner child if the inner
child is a sort that is expected to spill to disk. The materialize shields
the sort from the need to do mark/restore and thereby allows it to perform
its final merge pass on-the-fly; while the materialize itself is normally
cheap since it won't spill to disk unless the number of tuples with equal
key values exceeds work_mem.
Greg Stark, with some kibitzing from Tom Lane.
need be returned. We keep a heap of the current best N tuples and sift-up
new tuples into it as we scan the input. For M input tuples this means
only about M*log(N) comparisons instead of M*log(M), not to mention a lot
less workspace when N is small --- avoiding spill-to-disk for large M
is actually the most attractive thing about it. Patch includes planner
and executor support for invoking this facility in ORDER BY ... LIMIT
queries. Greg Stark, with some editorialization by moi.
access to the planner's cursor-related planning options, and provide new
FETCH/MOVE routines that allow access to the full power of those commands.
Small refactoring of planner(), pg_plan_query(), and pg_plan_queries()
APIs to make it convenient to pass the planning options down from SPI.
This is the core-code portion of Pavel Stehule's patch for scrollable
cursor support in plpgsql; I'll review and apply the plpgsql changes
separately.
possibly be any useful pathkeys --- to wit, queries with neither any
join clauses nor any ORDER BY request. It's nearly free to check for
this case and it saves a useful fraction of the planning time for simple
queries.
useless substructure for its RangeTblEntry nodes. (I chose to keep using the
same struct node type and just zero out the link fields for unneeded info,
rather than making a separate ExecRangeTblEntry type --- it seemed too
fragile to have two different rangetable representations.)
Along the way, put subplans into a list in the toplevel PlannedStmt node,
and have SubPlan nodes refer to them by list index instead of direct pointers.
Vadim wanted to do that years ago, but I never understood what he was on about
until now. It makes things a *whole* lot more robust, because we can stop
worrying about duplicate processing of subplans during expression tree
traversals. That's been a constant source of bugs, and it's finally gone.
There are some consequent simplifications yet to be made, like not using
a separate EState for subplans in the executor, but I'll tackle that later.
storing mostly-redundant Query trees in prepared statements, portals, etc.
To replace Query, a new node type called PlannedStmt is inserted by the
planner at the top of a completed plan tree; this carries just the fields of
Query that are still needed at runtime. The statement lists kept in portals
etc. now consist of intermixed PlannedStmt and bare utility-statement nodes
--- no Query. This incidentally allows us to remove some fields from Query
and Plan nodes that shouldn't have been there in the first place.
Still to do: simplify the execution-time range table; at the moment the
range table passed to the executor still contains Query trees for subqueries.
initdb forced due to change of stored rules.
this code was last gone over, there wasn't really any alternative to
globals because we didn't have the PlannerInfo struct being passed all
through the planner code. Now that we do, we can restructure things
to avoid non-reentrancy. I'm fooling with this because otherwise I'd
have had to add another global variable for the planned compact
range table list.
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.
columns procost and prorows, to allow simple user adjustment of the estimated
cost of a function call, as well as control of the estimated number of rows
returned by a set-returning function. We might eventually wish to extend this
to allow function-specific estimation routines, but there seems to be
consensus that we should try a simple constant estimate first. In particular
this provides a relatively simple way to control the order in which different
WHERE clauses are applied in a plan node, which is a Good Thing in view of the
fact that the recent EquivalenceClass planner rewrite made that much less
predictable than before.
representation of equivalence classes of variables. This is an extensive
rewrite, but it brings a number of benefits:
* planner no longer fails in the presence of "incomplete" operator families
that don't offer operators for every possible combination of datatypes.
* avoid generating and then discarding redundant equality clauses.
* remove bogus assumption that derived equalities always use operators
named "=".
* mergejoins can work with a variety of sort orders (e.g., descending) now,
instead of tying each mergejoinable operator to exactly one sort order.
* better recognition of redundant sort columns.
* can make use of equalities appearing underneath an outer join.
which comparison operators to use for plan nodes involving tuple comparison
(Agg, Group, Unique, SetOp). Formerly the executor looked up the default
equality operator for the datatype, which was really pretty shaky, since it's
possible that the data being fed to the node is sorted according to some
nondefault operator class that could have an incompatible idea of equality.
The planner knows what it has sorted by and therefore can provide the right
equality operator to use. Also, this change moves a couple of catalog lookups
out of the executor and into the planner, which should help startup time for
pre-planned queries by some small amount. Modify the planner to remove some
other cavalier assumptions about always being able to use the default
operators. Also add "nulls first/last" info to the Plan node for a mergejoin
--- neither the executor nor the planner can cope yet, but at least the API is
in place.
cases. Operator classes now exist within "operator families". While most
families are equivalent to a single class, related classes can be grouped
into one family to represent the fact that they are semantically compatible.
Cross-type operators are now naturally adjunct parts of a family, without
having to wedge them into a particular opclass as we had done originally.
This commit restructures the catalogs and cleans up enough of the fallout so
that everything still works at least as well as before, but most of the work
needed to actually improve the planner's behavior will come later. Also,
there are not yet CREATE/DROP/ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY commands; the only way
to create a new family right now is to allow CREATE OPERATOR CLASS to make
one by default. I owe some more documentation work, too. But that can all
be done in smaller pieces once this infrastructure is in place.
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.
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.
plpgsql support to come later. Along the way, convert execMain's
SELECT INTO support into a DestReceiver, in order to eliminate some ugly
special cases.
Jonah Harris and Tom Lane
(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.
(table or index) before trying to open its relcache entry. This fixes
race conditions in which someone else commits a change to the relation's
catalog entries while we are in process of doing relcache load. Problems
of that ilk have been reported sporadically for years, but it was not
really practical to fix until recently --- for instance, the recent
addition of WAL-log support for in-place updates helped.
Along the way, remove pg_am.amconcurrent: all AMs are now expected to support
concurrent update.
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.
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.
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.
This shouldn't affect simple indexscans much, while for bitmap scans that
are touching a lot of index rows, this seems to bring the estimates more
in line with reality. Per recent discussion.
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.
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.
Per my recent proposal. I ended up basing the implementation on the
existing mechanism for enforcing valid join orders of IN joins --- the
rules for valid outer-join orders are somewhat similar.
"ctid IN (list)" will still work after we convert IN to ScalarArrayOpExpr.
Make some minor efficiency improvements while at it, such as ensuring that
multiple TIDs are fetched in physical heap order. And fix EXPLAIN so that
it shows what's really going on for a TID scan.
qualification when the underlying operator is indexable and useOr is true.
That is, indexkey op ANY (ARRAY[...]) is effectively translated into an
OR combination of one indexscan for each array element. This only works
for bitmap index scans, of course, since regular indexscans no longer
support OR'ing of scans. There are still some loose ends to clean up
before changing 'x IN (list)' to translate as a ScalarArrayOpExpr;
for instance predtest.c ought to be taught about it. But this gets the
basic functionality in place.
sense and rename to "outerjoin_delayed" to more clearly reflect what it
means). I had decided that it was redundant in 8.1, but the folly of this
is exposed by a bug report from Sebastian Böck. The place where it's
needed is to prevent orindxpath.c from cherry-picking arms of an outer-join
OR clause to form a relation restriction that isn't actually legal to push
down to the relation scan level. There may be some legal cases that this
forbids optimizing, but we'd need much closer analysis to determine it.
only the inner-side relation would be considered as potential equijoin clauses,
which is wrong because the condition doesn't necessarily hold above the point
of the outer join. Per test case from Kevin Grittner (bug#1916).
so that the latter estimates the number of groups that grouping will
produce. This is needed because it is primarily query_planner that
makes the decision between fast-start and fast-finish plans, and in the
original coding it was unable to make more than a crude rule-of-thumb
choice when the query involved grouping. This revision helps us make
saner choices for queries like SELECT ... GROUP BY ... LIMIT, as in a
recent example from Mark Kirkwood. Also move the responsibility for
canonicalizing sort_pathkeys and group_pathkeys into query_planner;
this information has to be available anyway to support the first change,
and doing it this way lets us get rid of compare_noncanonical_pathkeys
entirely.
or OFFSET clauses by using estimate_expression_value(). The main advantage
of this is that if the expression is a Param and we have a value for the
Param, we'll use that value rather than defaulting. Also, fix some
thinkos in the logic for combining LIMIT/OFFSET with an externally
supplied tuple fraction (this covers cases like EXISTS(...LIMIT...)).
And make sure the results of all this are shown by EXPLAIN. Per a
gripe from Merlin Moncure.
planning logic for bitmap indexscans. Partial indexes create corner
cases in which a scan might be done with no explicit index qual conditions,
and the code wasn't handling those cases nicely. Also be a little
tenser about eliminating redundant clauses in the generated plan.
Per report from Dmitry Karasik.