This extends the castNode() notation introduced by commit 5bcab1114 to
provide, in one step, extraction of a list cell's pointer and coercion to
a concrete node type. For example, "lfirst_node(Foo, lc)" is the same
as "castNode(Foo, lfirst(lc))". Almost half of the uses of castNode
that have appeared so far include a list extraction call, so this is
pretty widely useful, and it saves a few more keystrokes compared to the
old way.
As with the previous patch, back-patch the addition of these macros to
pg_list.h, so that the notation will be available when back-patching.
Patch by me, after an idea of Andrew Gierth's.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/14197.1491841216@sss.pgh.pa.us
If there can certainly be no more than one matching inner row for a given
outer row, then the executor can move on to the next outer row as soon as
it's found one match; there's no need to continue scanning the inner
relation for this outer row. This saves useless scanning in nestloop
and hash joins. In merge joins, it offers the opportunity to skip
mark/restore processing, because we know we have not advanced past the
first possible match for the next outer row.
Of course, the devil is in the details: the proof of uniqueness must
depend only on joinquals (not otherquals), and if we want to skip
mergejoin mark/restore then it must depend only on merge clauses.
To avoid adding more planning overhead than absolutely necessary,
the present patch errs in the conservative direction: there are cases
where inner_unique or skip_mark_restore processing could be used, but
it will not do so because it's not sure that the uniqueness proof
depended only on "safe" clauses. This could be improved later.
David Rowley, reviewed and rather heavily editorialized on by me
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAApHDvqF6Sw-TK98bW48TdtFJ+3a7D2mFyZ7++=D-RyPsL76gw@mail.gmail.com
Follow on patch in the multi-variate statistics patch series.
CREATE STATISTICS s1 WITH (dependencies) ON (a, b) FROM t;
ANALYZE;
will collect dependency stats on (a, b) and then use the measured
dependency in subsequent query planning.
Commit 7b504eb282 added
CREATE STATISTICS with n-distinct coefficients. These are now
specified using the mutually exclusive option WITH (ndistinct).
Author: Tomas Vondra, David Rowley
Reviewed-by: Kyotaro HORIGUCHI, Álvaro Herrera, Dean Rasheed, Robert Haas
and many other comments and contributions
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/56f40b20-c464-fad2-ff39-06b668fac47c@2ndquadrant.com
A QueryEnvironment concept is added, which allows new types of
objects to be passed into queries from parsing on through
execution. At this point, the only thing implemented is a
collection of EphemeralNamedRelation objects -- relations which
can be referenced by name in queries, but do not exist in the
catalogs. The only type of ENR implemented is NamedTuplestore, but
provision is made to add more types fairly easily.
An ENR can carry its own TupleDesc or reference a relation in the
catalogs by relid.
Although these features can be used without SPI, convenience
functions are added to SPI so that ENRs can easily be used by code
run through SPI.
The initial use of all this is going to be transition tables in
AFTER triggers, but that will be added to each PL as a separate
commit.
An incidental effect of this patch is to produce a more informative
error message if an attempt is made to modify the contents of a CTE
from a referencing DML statement. No tests previously covered that
possibility, so one is added.
Kevin Grittner and Thomas Munro
Reviewed by Heikki Linnakangas, David Fetter, and Thomas Munro
with valuable comments and suggestions from many others
This extends the Aggregate node with two new features: HashAggregate
can now run multiple hashtables concurrently, and a new strategy
MixedAggregate populates hashtables while doing sorted grouping.
The planner will now attempt to save as many sorts as possible when
planning grouping sets queries, while not exceeding work_mem for the
estimated combined sizes of all hashtables used. No SQL-level changes
are required. There should be no user-visible impact other than the
new EXPLAIN output and possible changes to result ordering when ORDER
BY was not used (which affected a few regression tests). The
enable_hashagg option is respected.
Author: Andrew Gierth
Reviewers: Mark Dilger, Andres Freund
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/87vatszyhj.fsf@news-spur.riddles.org.uk
This replaces the old, recursive tree-walk based evaluation, with
non-recursive, opcode dispatch based, expression evaluation.
Projection is now implemented as part of expression evaluation.
This both leads to significant performance improvements, and makes
future just-in-time compilation of expressions easier.
The speed gains primarily come from:
- non-recursive implementation reduces stack usage / overhead
- simple sub-expressions are implemented with a single jump, without
function calls
- sharing some state between different sub-expressions
- reduced amount of indirect/hard to predict memory accesses by laying
out operation metadata sequentially; including the avoidance of
nearly all of the previously used linked lists
- more code has been moved to expression initialization, avoiding
constant re-checks at evaluation time
Future just-in-time compilation (JIT) has become easier, as
demonstrated by released patches intended to be merged in a later
release, for primarily two reasons: Firstly, due to a stricter split
between expression initialization and evaluation, less code has to be
handled by the JIT. Secondly, due to the non-recursive nature of the
generated "instructions", less performance-critical code-paths can
easily be shared between interpreted and compiled evaluation.
The new framework allows for significant future optimizations. E.g.:
- basic infrastructure for to later reduce the per executor-startup
overhead of expression evaluation, by caching state in prepared
statements. That'd be helpful in OLTPish scenarios where
initialization overhead is measurable.
- optimizing the generated "code". A number of proposals for potential
work has already been made.
- optimizing the interpreter. Similarly a number of proposals have
been made here too.
The move of logic into the expression initialization step leads to some
backward-incompatible changes:
- Function permission checks are now done during expression
initialization, whereas previously they were done during
execution. In edge cases this can lead to errors being raised that
previously wouldn't have been, e.g. a NULL array being coerced to a
different array type previously didn't perform checks.
- The set of domain constraints to be checked, is now evaluated once
during expression initialization, previously it was re-built
every time a domain check was evaluated. For normal queries this
doesn't change much, but e.g. for plpgsql functions, which caches
ExprStates, the old set could stick around longer. The behavior
around might still change.
Author: Andres Freund, with significant changes by Tom Lane,
changes by Heikki Linnakangas
Reviewed-By: Tom Lane, Heikki Linnakangas
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/20161206034955.bh33paeralxbtluv@alap3.anarazel.de
Commit 51ee6f3160 accidentally changed
the behavior around inheritance hierarchies; before, we always
considered parallel paths even for very small inheritance children,
because otherwise an inheritance hierarchy with even one small child
wouldn't be eligible for parallelism. That exception was inadverently
removed; put it back.
In passing, also adjust the degree-of-parallelism comptuation for
index-only scans not to consider the number of heap pages fetched.
Otherwise, we'll avoid parallel index-only scans on tables that are
mostly all-visible, which isn't especially logical.
Robert Haas and Amit Kapila, per a report from Ashutosh Sharma.
Discussion: http://postgr.es/m/CAE9k0PmgSoOHRd60SHu09aRVTHRSs8s6pmyhJKWHxWw9C_x+XA@mail.gmail.com
Fallout from fcec6caafa2: mark a variable in
set_tablefunc_size_estimates as used for asserts only.
Also, the planner_rte_fetch() call is pointless with assertions
disabled, so enclose it in a USE_ASSERT_CHECKING #ifdef; fix the same
problem in set_subquery_size_estimates().
First problem noted by David Rowley, whose compiler is noisier than mine
in this regard.
Like Gather, we spawn multiple workers and run the same plan in each
one; however, Gather Merge is used when each worker produces the same
output ordering and we want to preserve that output ordering while
merging together the streams of tuples from various workers. (In a
way, Gather Merge is like a hybrid of Gather and MergeAppend.)
This works out to a win if it saves us from having to perform an
expensive Sort. In cases where only a small amount of data would need
to be sorted, it may actually be faster to use a regular Gather node
and then sort the results afterward, because Gather Merge sometimes
needs to wait synchronously for tuples whereas a pure Gather generally
doesn't. But if this avoids an expensive sort then it's a win.
Rushabh Lathia, reviewed and tested by Amit Kapila, Thomas Munro,
and Neha Sharma, and reviewed and revised by me.
Discussion: http://postgr.es/m/CAGPqQf09oPX-cQRpBKS0Gq49Z+m6KBxgxd_p9gX8CKk_d75HoQ@mail.gmail.com
The index is scanned by a single process, but then all cooperating
processes can iterate jointly over the resulting set of heap blocks.
In the future, we might also want to support using a parallel bitmap
index scan to set up for a parallel bitmap heap scan, but that's a
job for another day.
Dilip Kumar, with some corrections and cosmetic changes by me. The
larger patch set of which this is a part has been reviewed and tested
by (at least) Andres Freund, Amit Khandekar, Tushar Ahuja, Rafia
Sabih, Haribabu Kommi, Thomas Munro, and me.
Discussion: http://postgr.es/m/CAFiTN-uc4=0WxRGfCzs-xfkMYcSEWUC-Fon6thkJGjkh9i=13A@mail.gmail.com
XMLTABLE is defined by the SQL/XML standard as a feature that allows
turning XML-formatted data into relational form, so that it can be used
as a <table primary> in the FROM clause of a query.
This new construct provides significant simplicity and performance
benefit for XML data processing; what in a client-side custom
implementation was reported to take 20 minutes can be executed in 400ms
using XMLTABLE. (The same functionality was said to take 10 seconds
using nested PostgreSQL XPath function calls, and 5 seconds using
XMLReader under PL/Python).
The implemented syntax deviates slightly from what the standard
requires. First, the standard indicates that the PASSING clause is
optional and that multiple XML input documents may be given to it; we
make it mandatory and accept a single document only. Second, we don't
currently support a default namespace to be specified.
This implementation relies on a new executor node based on a hardcoded
method table. (Because the grammar is fixed, there is no extensibility
in the current approach; further constructs can be implemented on top of
this such as JSON_TABLE, but they require changes to core code.)
Author: Pavel Stehule, Álvaro Herrera
Extensively reviewed by: Craig Ringer
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAFj8pRAgfzMD-LoSmnMGybD0WsEznLHWap8DO79+-GTRAPR4qA@mail.gmail.com
In combination with 569174f1be, which
taught the btree AM how to perform parallel index scans, this allows
parallel index scan plans on btree indexes. This infrastructure
should be general enough to support parallel index scans for other
index AMs as well, if someone updates them to support parallel
scans.
Amit Kapila, reviewed and tested by Anastasia Lubennikova, Tushar
Ahuja, and Haribabu Kommi, and me.
Currently, we only need this logic in order to cost a Bitmap Heap
Scan. But a pending patch for Parallel Bitmap Heap Scan also uses
it to help figure out how many workers to use for the scan, which
has to be determined prior to costing. So, move the logic to
a separate function to make that easier.
Dilip Kumar. The patch series of which this is a part has been
reviewed by Andres Freund, Amit Khendekar, Tushar Ahuja, Rafia
Sabih, Haribabu Kommi, and me; it is not clear from the email
discussion which of those people have looked specifically at this
part.
Discussion: http://postgr.es/m/CAFiTN-v3QYNJEZnnmKCeATuLbN-h9tMVfeEF0+BrouYDqjXgwg@mail.gmail.com
For a partial path, the cardinality estimate needs to reflect the
number of rows we think each worker will see, rather than the total
number of rows; otherwise, costing will go wrong. The previous coding
got this completely wrong for parallel joins.
Unfortunately, this change may destabilize plans for users of 9.6 who
have enabled parallel query, but since 9.6 is still fairly new I'm
hoping expectations won't be too settled yet. Also, this is really a
brown-paper-bag bug, so leaving it unfixed for the entire lifetime of
9.6 seems unwise.
Related reports (whose import I initially failed to recognize) by
Tomas Vondra and Tom Lane.
Discussion: http://postgr.es/m/CA+TgmoaDxZ5z5Kw_oCQoymNxNoVaTCXzPaODcOuao=CzK8dMZw@mail.gmail.com
This case wasn't thought through sufficiently in commit 100340e2d.
It's true that the FK proves that every outer row has a match in the
inner table, but we forgot that some of the inner rows might be filtered
away by WHERE conditions located within the semijoin's RHS.
If the RHS is just one table, we can reasonably take the semijoin
selectivity as equal to the fraction of the referenced table's rows
that are expected to survive its restriction clauses.
If the RHS is a join, it's not clear how much of the referenced table
might get through the join, so fall back to the same rule we were
already using for other outer-join cases: use the minimum of the
regular per-clause selectivity estimates. This gives the same result
as if we hadn't considered the FK at all when there's a single FK
column, but it should still help for multi-column FKs, which is the
case that 100340e2d is really meant to help with.
Back-patch to 9.6 where the previous commit came in.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/16149.1481835103@sss.pgh.pa.us
Commit 7a2fe9bd0 improved merge append so that replacement of a tuple
takes log(N) operations, not twice log(N). Since cost_merge_append knew
about that explicitly, we should adjust it. This probably makes little
difference in practice, but the obsolete comment is confusing.
Ideally this would have been put in in 9.3 with the underlying behavior
change; but I'm not going to back-patch it, since there's some small chance
of changing a plan choice that somebody's optimized for.
Thomas Munro
Discussion: <CAEepm=0WQBSvuYcMOUj4Ga4NXpu2J=ejZcE=e=eiTjTX-6_gDw@mail.gmail.com>
cost_rescan assumed that we don't need to rebuild the hash table when
rescanning a hash join. However, that's currently only true for
single-batch joins; for a multi-batch join we must charge full freight.
This probably has escaped notice because we'd be unlikely to put a hash
join on the inside of a nestloop anyway. Nonetheless, it's wrong.
Fix in HEAD, but don't backpatch for fear of destabilizing plans in
stable releases.
I'd been wondering why I was sometimes seeing fractional rowcount
estimates in parallel-query situations, and this seems to be the
reason. (You won't see the fractional parts in EXPLAIN, because it
prints rowcounts with %.0f, but they are apparent in the debugger.)
A fractional rowcount is not any saner for a partial path than any
other kind of path, and it's equally likely to break cost estimation
for higher paths, so apply clamp_row_est() like we do in other places.
VS2013 apparently has a problem with taking the address of a formal
parameter in some cases. We do that elsewhere without trouble, but
in this case the address is being passed to a subroutine that will
probably get inlined, so maybe the combination of those things is
what tickles the bug. Anyway, introducing an extra copy of the
parameter value is enough to work around it. Per trouble report
from Umair Shahid.
Report: <CAM184AcjqKYZSdQqBHDrnENXHhW=mXbUC46QYPJ=nAh0gUHCGA@mail.gmail.com>
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>
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
The original implementation of TABLESAMPLE modeled the tablesample method
API on index access methods, which wasn't a good choice because, without
specialized DDL commands, there's no way to build an extension that can
implement a TSM. (Raw inserts into system catalogs are not an acceptable
thing to do, because we can't undo them during DROP EXTENSION, nor will
pg_upgrade behave sanely.) Instead adopt an API more like procedural
language handlers or foreign data wrappers, wherein the only SQL-level
support object needed is a single handler function identified by having
a special return type. This lets us get rid of the supporting catalog
altogether, so that no custom DDL support is needed for the feature.
Adjust the API so that it can support non-constant tablesample arguments
(the original coding assumed we could evaluate the argument expressions at
ExecInitSampleScan time, which is undesirable even if it weren't outright
unsafe), and discourage sampling methods from looking at invisible tuples.
Make sure that the BERNOULLI and SYSTEM methods are genuinely repeatable
within and across queries, as required by the SQL standard, and deal more
honestly with methods that can't support that requirement.
Make a full code-review pass over the tablesample additions, and fix
assorted bugs, omissions, infelicities, and cosmetic issues (such as
failure to put the added code stanzas in a consistent ordering).
Improve EXPLAIN's output of tablesample plans, too.
Back-patch to 9.5 so that we don't have to support the original API
in production.
When the inner side of a nestloop SEMI or ANTI join is an indexscan that
uses all the join clauses as indexquals, it can be presumed that both
matched and unmatched outer rows will be processed very quickly: for
matched rows, we'll stop after fetching one row from the indexscan, while
for unmatched rows we'll have an indexscan that finds no matching index
entries, which should also be quick. The planner already knew about this,
but it was nonetheless charging for at least one full run of the inner
indexscan, as a consequence of concerns about the behavior of materialized
inner scans --- but those concerns don't apply in the fast case. If the
inner side has low cardinality (many matching rows) this could make an
indexscan plan look far more expensive than it actually is. To fix,
rearrange the work in initial_cost_nestloop/final_cost_nestloop so that we
don't add the inner scan cost until we've inspected the indexquals, and
then we can add either the full-run cost or just the first tuple's cost as
appropriate.
Experimentation with this fix uncovered another problem: add_path and
friends were coded to disregard cheap startup cost when considering
parameterized paths. That's usually okay (and desirable, because it thins
the path herd faster); but in this fast case for SEMI/ANTI joins, it could
result in throwing away the desired plain indexscan path in favor of a
bitmap scan path before we ever get to the join costing logic. In the
many-matching-rows cases of interest here, a bitmap scan will do a lot more
work than required, so this is a problem. To fix, add a per-relation flag
consider_param_startup that works like the existing consider_startup flag,
but applies to parameterized paths, and set it for relations that are the
inside of a SEMI or ANTI join.
To make this patch reasonably safe to back-patch, care has been taken to
avoid changing the planner's behavior except in the very narrow case of
SEMI/ANTI joins with inner indexscans. There are places in
compare_path_costs_fuzzily and add_path_precheck that are not terribly
consistent with the new approach, but changing them will affect planner
decisions at the margins in other cases, so we'll leave that for a
HEAD-only fix.
Back-patch to 9.3; before that, the consider_startup flag didn't exist,
meaning that the second aspect of the patch would be too invasive.
Per a complaint from Peter Holzer and analysis by Tomas Vondra.
Bruce Momjian
Tom Lane
Simon Riggs
Kevin Grittner
Andrew Gierth
Andres Freund
Robert Haas
Alvaro Herrera
Peter Eisentraut
Heikki Linnakangas