WITH TIES is an option to the FETCH FIRST N ROWS clause (the SQL
standard's spelling of LIMIT), where you additionally get rows that
compare equal to the last of those N rows by the columns in the
mandatory ORDER BY clause.
There was a proposal by Andrew Gierth to implement this functionality in
a more powerful way that would yield more features, but the other patch
had not been finished at this time, so we decided to use this one for
now in the spirit of incremental development.
Author: Surafel Temesgen <surafel3000@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Álvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>
Reviewed-by: Tomas Vondra <tomas.vondra@2ndquadrant.com>
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CALAY4q9ky7rD_A4vf=FVQvCGngm3LOes-ky0J6euMrg=_Se+ag@mail.gmail.com
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/87o8wvz253.fsf@news-spur.riddles.org.uk
Perusal of the code coverage report shows that the existing regression
test cases for LIMIT/OFFSET don't exercise the nodeLimit code paths
involving backwards scan, empty results, or null values of LIMIT/OFFSET.
Improve the coverage.
In commit 915b703e1 I gave get_agg_clause_costs() the responsibility of
marking Aggref nodes with the appropriate aggtranstype. I failed to notice
that where it was being called from, it might see only a subset of the
Aggref nodes that were in the original targetlist. Specifically, if there
are duplicate aggregate calls in the tlist, either make_sort_input_target
or make_window_input_target might put just a single instance into the
grouping_target, and then only that instance would get marked. Fix by
moving the call back into grouping_planner(), before we start building
assorted PathTargets from the query tlist. Per report from Stefan Huehner.
Report: <20160702131056.GD3165@huehner.biz>
In commit 9118d03a8c we taught the planner to postpone evaluation of
set-returning functions in a SELECT's targetlist until after any sort done
to satisfy ORDER BY. However, if we postpone some SRFs this way while
others do not get postponed (because they're sort or group key columns)
we will break the traditional behavior by which all SRFs in the tlist run
in-step during ExecTargetList(), so that you get the least common multiple
of their periods not the product. Fix make_sort_input_target() so it will
not split up SRF evaluation in such cases.
There is still a hazard of similar odd behavior if there's a SRF in a
grouping column and another one that isn't, but that was true before
and we're just trying to preserve bug-compatibility with the traditional
behavior. This whole area is overdue to be rethought and reimplemented,
but we'll try to avoid changing behavior until then.
Per report from Regina Obe.
It is frequently useful for volatile, set-returning, or expensive functions
in a SELECT's targetlist to be postponed till after ORDER BY and LIMIT are
done. Otherwise, the functions might be executed for every row of the
table despite the presence of LIMIT, and/or be executed in an unexpected
order. For example, in
SELECT x, nextval('seq') FROM tab ORDER BY x LIMIT 10;
it's probably desirable that the nextval() values are ordered the same
as x, and that nextval() is not run more than 10 times.
In the past, Postgres was inconsistent in this area: you would get the
desirable behavior if the ordering were performed via an indexscan, but
not if it had to be done by an explicit sort step. Getting the desired
behavior reliably required contortions like
SELECT x, nextval('seq')
FROM (SELECT x FROM tab ORDER BY x) ss LIMIT 10;
This patch conditionally postpones evaluation of pure-output target
expressions (that is, those that are not used as DISTINCT, ORDER BY, or
GROUP BY columns) so that they effectively occur after sorting, even if an
explicit sort step is necessary. Volatile expressions and set-returning
expressions are always postponed, so as to provide consistent semantics.
Expensive expressions (costing more than 10 times typical operator cost,
which by default would include any user-defined function) are postponed
if there is a LIMIT or if there are expressions that must be postponed.
We could be more aggressive and postpone any nontrivial expression, but
there are costs associated with doing so: it requires an extra Result plan
node which adds some overhead, and postponement changes the volume of data
going through the sort step, perhaps for the worse. Since we tend not to
have very good estimates of the output width of nontrivial expressions,
it's hard to have much confidence in our ability to predict whether
postponement would increase or decrease the cost of the sort; therefore
this patch doesn't attempt to make decisions conditionally on that.
Between these factors and a general desire not to change query behavior
when there's not a demonstrable benefit, it seems best to be conservative
about applying postponement. We might tweak the decision rules in the
future, though.
Konstantin Knizhnik, heavily rewritten by me
recompute the limit/offset immediately, so that the updated values are
available when the child's ReScan function is invoked. Add a regression
test for this, too. Bug is new in HEAD (due to the bounded-sorting patch)
so no need for back-patch.
I did not do anything about merging this signaling with chgParam processing,
but if we were to do that we'd still need to compute the updated values
at this point rather than during the first ProcNode call.
Per observation and test case from Greg Stark, though I didn't use his patch.
Alvaro Herrera
Tom Lane
Peter Eisentraut
Bruce Momjian
Thomas G. Lockhart
Jan Wieck