A PlaceHolderVar's expression might contain another, lower-level
PlaceHolderVar. If the outer PlaceHolderVar is used, the inner one
certainly will be also, and so we have to make sure that both of them get
into the placeholder_list with correct ph_may_need values during the
initial pre-scan of the query (before deconstruct_jointree starts).
We did this correctly for PlaceHolderVars appearing in the query quals,
but overlooked the issue for those appearing in the top-level targetlist;
with the result that nested placeholders referenced only in the targetlist
did not work correctly, as illustrated in bug #6154.
While at it, add some error checking to find_placeholder_info to ensure
that we don't try to create new placeholders after it's too late to do so;
they have to all be created before deconstruct_jointree starts.
Back-patch to 8.4 where the PlaceHolderVar mechanism was introduced.
Regular aggregate functions in combination with, or within the arguments
of, window functions are OK per spec; they have the semantics that the
aggregate output rows are computed and then we run the window functions
over that row set. (Thus, this combination is not really useful unless
there's a GROUP BY so that more than one aggregate output row is possible.)
The case without GROUP BY could fail, as recently reported by Jeff Davis,
because sloppy construction of the Agg node's targetlist resulted in extra
references to possibly-ungrouped Vars appearing outside the aggregate
function calls themselves. See the added regression test case for an
example.
Fixing this requires modifying the API of flatten_tlist and its underlying
function pull_var_clause. I chose to make pull_var_clause's API for
aggregates identical to what it was already doing for placeholders, since
the useful behaviors turn out to be the same (error, report node as-is, or
recurse into it). I also tightened the error checking in this area a bit:
if it was ever valid to see an uplevel Var, Aggref, or PlaceHolderVar here,
that was a long time ago, so complain instead of ignoring them.
Backpatch into 9.1. The failure exists in 8.4 and 9.0 as well, but seeing
that it only occurs in a basically-useless corner case, it doesn't seem
worth the risks of changing a function API in a minor release. There might
be third-party code using pull_var_clause.
All expression nodes now have an explicit output-collation field, unless
they are known to only return a noncollatable data type (such as boolean
or record). Also, nodes that can invoke collation-aware functions store
a separate field that is the collation value to pass to the function.
This avoids confusion that arises when a function has collatable inputs
and noncollatable output type, or vice versa.
Also, replace the parser's on-the-fly collation assignment method with
a post-pass over the completed expression tree. This allows us to use
a more complex (and hopefully more nearly spec-compliant) assignment
rule without paying for it in extra storage in every expression node.
Fix assorted bugs in the planner's handling of collations by making
collation one of the defining properties of an EquivalenceClass and
by converting CollateExprs into discardable RelabelType nodes during
expression preprocessing.
This is advantageous first because it allows us to hash the smaller table
regardless of the outer-join type, and second because hash join can be more
flexible than merge join in dealing with arbitrary join quals in a FULL
join. For merge join all the join quals have to be mergejoinable, but hash
join will work so long as there's at least one hashjoinable qual --- the
others can be any condition. (This is true essentially because we don't
keep per-inner-tuple match flags in merge join, while hash join can do so.)
To do this, we need a has-it-been-matched flag for each tuple in the
hashtable, not just one for the current outer tuple. The key idea that
makes this practical is that we can store the match flag in the tuple's
infomask, since there are lots of bits there that are of no interest for a
MinimalTuple. So we aren't increasing the size of the hashtable at all for
the feature.
To write this without turning the hash code into even more of a pile of
spaghetti than it already was, I rewrote ExecHashJoin in a state-machine
style, similar to ExecMergeJoin. Other than that decision, it was pretty
straightforward.
The core of this patch is hash_array() and associated typcache
infrastructure, which works just about exactly like the existing support
for array comparison.
In addition I did some work to ensure that the planner won't think that an
array type is hashable unless its element type is hashable, and similarly
for sorting. This includes adding a datatype parameter to op_hashjoinable
and op_mergejoinable, and adding an explicit "hashable" flag to
SortGroupClause. The lack of a cross-check on the element type was a
pre-existing bug in mergejoin support --- but it didn't matter so much
before, because if you couldn't sort the element type there wasn't any good
alternative to failing anyhow. Now that we have the alternative of hashing
the array type, there are cases where we can avoid a failure by being picky
at the planner stage, so it's time to be picky.
The issue of exactly how to combine the per-element hash values to produce
an array hash is still open for discussion, but the rest of this is pretty
solid, so I'll commit it as-is.
Zoltan Boszormenyi exhibited a test case in which planning time was
dominated by construction of EquivalenceClasses and PathKeys that had no
actual relevance to the query (and in fact got discarded immediately).
This happened because we generated PathKeys describing the sort ordering of
every index on every table in the query, and only after that checked to see
if the sort ordering was relevant. The EC/PK construction code is O(N^2)
in the number of ECs, which is all right for the intended number of such
objects, but it gets out of hand if there are ECs for lots of irrelevant
indexes.
To fix, twiddle the handling of mergeclauses a little bit to ensure that
every interesting EC is created before we begin path generation. (This
doesn't cost anything --- in fact I think it's a bit cheaper than before
--- since we always eventually created those ECs anyway.) Then, if an
index column can't be found in any pre-existing EC, we know that that sort
ordering is irrelevant for the query. Instead of creating a useless EC,
we can just not build a pathkey for the index column in the first place.
The index will still be considered if it's useful for non-order-related
reasons, but we will think of its output as unsorted.
This patch eliminates the former need to sort the output of an Append scan
when an ordered scan of an inheritance tree is wanted. This should be
particularly useful for fast-start cases such as queries with LIMIT.
Original patch by Greg Stark, with further hacking by Hans-Jurgen Schonig,
Robert Haas, and Tom Lane.
The original coding correctly noted that these aren't just redundancies
(they're effectively X IS NOT NULL, assuming = is strict). However, they
got treated that way if X happened to be in a single-member EquivalenceClass
already, which could happen if there was an ORDER BY X clause, for instance.
The simplest and most reliable solution seems to be to not try to process
such clauses through the EquivalenceClass machinery; just throw them back
for traditional processing. The amount of work that'd be needed to be
smarter than that seems out of proportion to the benefit.
Per bug #5084 from Bernt Marius Johnsen, and analysis by Andrew Gierth.
In this case we generate two PathKey references to the expression (one for
DISTINCT and one for ORDER BY) and they really need to refer to the same
EquivalenceClass. However get_eclass_for_sort_expr was being overly paranoid
and creating two different EC's. Correct behavior is to use the SortGroupRef
index to decide whether two references to volatile expressions that are
equal() (ie textually equivalent) should be considered the same.
Backpatch to 8.4. Possibly this should be changed in 8.3 as well, but
I'll refrain in the absence of evidence of a visible failure in that branch.
Per bug #5049.
Stefan Kaltenbrunner. The most reasonable behavior (at least for the near
term) seems to be to ignore the PlaceHolderVar and examine its argument
instead. In support of this, change the API of pull_var_clause() to allow
callers to request recursion into PlaceHolderVars. Currently
estimate_num_groups() is the only customer for that behavior, but where
there's one there may be others.
keys when considering a semi or anti join. This requires estimating the
selectivity of the merge qual as though it were a regular inner join condition.
To allow caching both that and the real outer-join-aware selectivity, split
RestrictInfo.this_selec into two fields.
This fixes one of the problems reported by Kevin Grittner.
outer join clauses. Given, say,
... from a left join b on a.a1 = b.b1 where a.a1 = 42;
we'll deduce a clause b.b1 = 42 and then mark the original join clause
redundant (we can't remove it completely for reasons I don't feel like
squeezing into this log entry). However the original implementation of
that wasn't bulletproof, because clause_selectivity() wouldn't honor
this_selec if given nonzero varRelid --- which in practice meant that
it worked as desired *except* when considering index scan quals. Which
resulted in bogus underestimation of the size of the indexscan result for
an inner indexscan in an outer join, and consequently a possibly bad
choice of indexscan vs. bitmap scan. Fix by introducing an explicit test
into clause_selectivity(). Also, to make sure we don't trigger that test
in corner cases, change the convention to be that this_selec > 1, not
this_selec = 1, means it's been marked redundant. Per trouble report from
Scara Maccai.
Back-patch to 8.2, where the problem was introduced.
that represent some expression that we desire to compute below the top level
of the plan, and then let that value "bubble up" as though it were a plain
Var (ie, a column value).
The immediate application is to allow sub-selects to be flattened even when
they are below an outer join and have non-nullable output expressions.
Formerly we couldn't flatten because such an expression wouldn't properly
go to NULL when evaluated above the outer join. Now, we wrap it in a
PlaceHolderVar and arrange for the actual evaluation to occur below the outer
join. When the resulting Var bubbles up through the join, it will be set to
NULL if necessary, yielding the correct results. This fixes a planner
limitation that's existed since 7.1.
In future we might want to use this mechanism to re-introduce some form of
Hellerstein's "expensive functions" optimization, ie place the evaluation of
an expensive function at the most suitable point in the plan tree.
into nodes/nodeFuncs, so as to reduce wanton cross-subsystem #includes inside
the backend. There's probably more that should be done along this line,
but this is a start anyway.
as per my recent proposal:
1. Fold SortClause and GroupClause into a single node type SortGroupClause.
We were already relying on them to be struct-equivalent, so using two node
tags wasn't accomplishing much except to get in the way of comparing items
with equal().
2. Add an "eqop" field to SortGroupClause to carry the associated equality
operator. This is cheap for the parser to get at the same time it's looking
up the sort operator, and storing it eliminates the need for repeated
not-so-cheap lookups during planning. In future this will also let us
represent GROUP/DISTINCT operations on datatypes that have hash opclasses
but no btree opclasses (ie, they have equality but no natural sort order).
The previous representation simply didn't work for that, since its only
indicator of comparison semantics was a sort operator.
3. Add a hasDistinctOn boolean to struct Query to explicitly record whether
the distinctClause came from DISTINCT or DISTINCT ON. This allows removing
some complicated and not 100% bulletproof code that attempted to figure
that out from the distinctClause alone.
This patch doesn't in itself create any new capability, but it's necessary
infrastructure for future attempts to use hash-based grouping for DISTINCT
and UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT.
of poorer planning in 8.3 than 8.2:
1. After pushing a constant across an outer join --- ie, given
"a LEFT JOIN b ON (a.x = b.y) WHERE a.x = 42", we can deduce that b.y is
sort of equal to 42, in the sense that we needn't fetch any b rows where
it isn't 42 --- loop to see if any additional deductions can be made.
Previous releases did that by recursing, but I had mistakenly thought that
this was no longer necessary given the EquivalenceClass machinery.
2. Allow pushing constants across outer join conditions even if the
condition is outerjoin_delayed due to a lower outer join. This is safe
as long as the condition is strict and we re-test it at the upper join.
3. Keep the outer-join clause even if we successfully push a constant
across it. This is *necessary* in the outerjoin_delayed case, but
even in the simple case, it seems better to do this to ensure that the
join search order heuristics will consider the join as reasonable to
make. Mark such a clause as having selectivity 1.0, though, since it's
not going to eliminate very many rows after application of the constant
condition.
4. Tweak have_relevant_eclass_joinclause to report that two relations
are joinable when they have vars that are equated to the same constant.
We won't actually generate any joinclause from such an EquivalenceClass,
but again it seems that in such a case it's a good idea to consider
the join as worth costing out.
5. Fix a bug in select_mergejoin_clauses that was exposed by these
changes: we have to reject candidate mergejoin clauses if either side was
equated to a constant, because we can't construct a canonical pathkey list
for such a clause. This is an implementation restriction that might be
worth fixing someday, but it doesn't seem critical to get it done for 8.3.
where the EquivalenceClass machinery is unable to deduce anything more from a
simple "var = const" qual clause. There are probably some more cases where
this could be done, but this seems to take care of most of the added overhead
for simple queries. Per gripe from Guillaume Smet.
In passing, fix a problem that was exposed by this change:
reconsider_outer_join_clause and friends were passing the wrong relids to
build_implied_join_equality, resulting in RestrictInfos with the wrong
required_relids. This mistake was masked in typical cases since the bogus
RestrictInfos would never have escaped from the EquivalenceClass machinery,
but I think there might be corner cases involving "broken" ECs where there
would have been a visible failure even without the new optimization. In any
case the code was certainly not operating as intended.
predictable manner; in particular that if you say ORDER BY output-column-ref,
it will in fact sort by that specific column even if there are multiple
syntactic matches. An example is
SELECT random() AS a, random() AS b FROM ... ORDER BY b, a;
While the use-case for this might be a bit debatable, it worked as expected
in earlier releases, so we should preserve the behavior for 8.3. Per my
recent proposal.
While at it, fix convert_subquery_pathkeys() to handle RelabelType stripping
in both directions; it needs this for the same reasons make_sort_from_pathkeys
does.
ORDER BY <constant> as redundant. One is that this means query_planner()
has to canonicalize pathkeys even when the query jointree is empty;
the canonicalization was always a no-op in such cases before, but no more.
Also, we have to guard against thinking that a set-returning function is
"constant" for this purpose. Add a couple of regression tests for these
evidently under-tested cases. Per report from Greg Stark and subsequent
experimentation.
which I had removed in the first cut of the EquivalenceClass rewrite to
simplify that patch a little. But it's still important --- in a four-way
join problem mergejoinscansel() was eating about 40% of the planning time
according to gprof. Also, improve the EquivalenceClass code to re-use
join RestrictInfos rather than generating fresh ones for each join
considered. This saves some memory space but more importantly improves
the effectiveness of caching planning info in RestrictInfos.
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.
Bruce Momjian
Tom Lane
Magnus Hagander