a separate statement (though it can still be invoked as part of VACUUM, too).
pg_statistic redesigned to be more flexible about what statistics are
stored. ANALYZE now collects a list of several of the most common values,
not just one, plus a histogram (not just the min and max values). Random
sampling is used to make the process reasonably fast even on very large
tables. The number of values and histogram bins collected is now
user-settable via an ALTER TABLE command.
There is more still to do; the new stats are not being used everywhere
they could be in the planner. But the remaining changes for this project
should be localized, and the behavior is already better than before.
A not-very-related change is that sorting now makes use of btree comparison
routines if it can find one, rather than invoking '<' twice.
to specific base or join RelOptInfo nodes during planning. This preserves
the more-intuitive behavior of 7.0.* --- if you write an expensive clause
(such as a sub-select) last, it should get evaluated last. Someday we
ought to try to have some intelligence about the order of evaluation of
WHERE clauses, but for now we should not override what the user wrote.
1. If there is exactly one pg_operator entry of the right name and oprkind,
oper() and related routines would return that entry whether its input type
had anything to do with the request or not. This is just premature
optimization: we shouldn't return the single candidate until after we verify
that it really is a valid candidate, ie, is at least coercion-compatible
with the given types.
2. oper() and related routines only promise a coercion-compatible result.
Unfortunately, there were quite a few callers that assumed the returned
operator is binary-compatible with the given datatype; they would proceed
to call it without making any datatype coercions. These callers include
sorting, grouping, aggregation, and VACUUM ANALYZE. In general I think
it is appropriate for these callers to require an exact or binary-compatible
match, so I've added a new routine compatible_oper() that only succeeds if
it can find an operator that doesn't require any run-time conversions.
Callers now call oper() or compatible_oper() depending on whether they are
prepared to deal with type conversion or not.
The upshot of these bugs is revealed by the following silliness in PL/Tcl's
selftest: it creates an operator @< on int4, and then tries to use it to
sort a char(N) column. The system would let it do that :-( (and evidently
has done so since 6.3 :-( :-(). The result in this case was just a silly
sort order, but the reverse combination would've provoked coredump from
trying to dereference integers. With this fix you get more reasonable
behavior:
pltcl_test=# select * from T_pkey1 order by key1, key2 using @<;
ERROR: Unable to identify an operator '@<' for types 'bpchar' and 'bpchar'
You will have to retype this query using an explicit cast
comparison does not consider paths different when they differ only in
uninteresting aspects of sort order. (We had a special case of this
consideration for indexscans already, but generalize it to apply to
ordered join paths too.) Be stricter about what is a canonical pathkey
to allow faster pathkey comparison. Cache canonical pathkeys and
dispersion stats for left and right sides of a RestrictInfo's clause,
to avoid repeated computation. Total speedup will depend on number of
tables in a query, but I see about 4x speedup of planning phase for
a sample seven-table query.
avoid repeated evaluations in cost_qual_eval(). This turns out to save
a useful fraction of planning time. No change to external representation
of RestrictInfo --- although that node type doesn't appear in stored
rules anyway.
maintained for each cache entry. A cache entry will not be freed until
the matching ReleaseSysCache call has been executed. This eliminates
worries about cache entries getting dropped while still in use. See
my posting to pg-hackers of even date for more info.
(Don't forget that an alias is required.) Views reimplemented as expanding
to subselect-in-FROM. Grouping, aggregates, DISTINCT in views actually
work now (he says optimistically). No UNION support in subselects/views
yet, but I have some ideas about that. Rule-related permissions checking
moved out of rewriter and into executor.
INITDB REQUIRED!
right thing with variable-free clauses that contain noncachable functions,
such as 'WHERE random() < 0.5' --- these are evaluated once per
potential output tuple. Expressions that contain only Params are
now candidates to be indexscan quals --- for example, 'var = ($1 + 1)'
can now be indexed. Cope with RelabelType nodes atop potential indexscan
variables --- this oversight prevents 7.0.* from recognizing some
potentially indexscanable situations.
from Param nodes, per discussion a few days ago on pghackers. Add new
expression node type FieldSelect that implements the functionality where
it's actually needed. Clean up some other unused fields in Func nodes
as well.
NOTE: initdb forced due to change in stored expression trees for rules.
mergejoinable qual clauses, and add them to the query quals. For
example, WHERE a = b AND b = c will cause us to add AND a = c.
This is necessary to ensure that it's safe to use these variables
as interchangeable sort keys, which is something 7.0 knows how to do.
Should provide a useful improvement in planning ability, too.
accesses versus sequential accesses, a (very crude) estimate of the
effects of caching on random page accesses, and cost to evaluate WHERE-
clause expressions. Export critical parameters for this model as SET
variables. Also, create SET variables for the planner's enable flags
(enable_seqscan, enable_indexscan, etc) so that these can be controlled
more conveniently than via PGOPTIONS.
Planner now estimates both startup cost (cost before retrieving
first tuple) and total cost of each path, so it can optimize queries
with LIMIT on a reasonable basis by interpolating between these costs.
Same facility is a win for EXISTS(...) subqueries and some other cases.
Redesign pathkey representation to achieve a major speedup in planning
(I saw as much as 5X on a 10-way join); also minor changes in planner
to reduce memory consumption by recycling discarded Path nodes and
not constructing unnecessary lists.
Minor cleanups to display more-plausible costs in some cases in
EXPLAIN output.
Initdb forced by change in interface to index cost estimation
functions.
fields in JoinPaths --- turns out that we do need that after all :-(.
Also, rearrange planner so that only one RelOptInfo is created for a
particular set of joined base relations, no matter how many different
subsets of relations it can be created from. This saves memory and
processing time compared to the old method of making a bunch of RelOptInfos
and then removing the duplicates. Clean up the jointree iteration logic;
not sure if it's better, but I sure find it more readable and plausible
now, particularly for the case of 'bushy plans'.
pghackers discussion of 5-Jan-2000. The amopselect and amopnpages
estimators are gone, and in their place is a per-AM amcostestimate
procedure (linked to from pg_am, not pg_amop).
mentioned in FROM but not elsewhere in the query: such tables should be
joined over anyway. Aside from being more standards-compliant, this allows
removal of some very ugly hacks for COUNT(*) processing. Also, allow
HAVING clause without aggregate functions, since SQL does. Clean up
CREATE RULE statement-list syntax the same way Bruce just fixed the
main stmtmulti production.
CAUTION: addition of a field to RangeTblEntry nodes breaks stored rules;
you will have to initdb if you have any rules.
Most parts of the planner should ignore, or indeed never even see, uplevel
Vars because they will be or have been replaced by Params. There were a
couple of places that got it wrong though, probably my fault from recent
changes...
and fix_opids processing to a single recursive pass over the plan tree
executed at the very tail end of planning, rather than haphazardly here
and there at different places. Now that tlist Vars do not get modified
until the very end, it's possible to get rid of the klugy var_equal and
match_varid partial-matching routines, and just use plain equal()
throughout the optimizer. This is a step towards allowing merge and
hash joins to be done on expressions instead of only Vars ...
store all ordering information in pathkeys lists (which are now lists of
lists of PathKeyItem nodes, not just lists of lists of vars). This was
a big win --- the code is smaller and IMHO more understandable than it
was, even though it handles more cases. I believe the node changes will
not force an initdb for anyone; planner nodes don't show up in stored
rules.
identified by Hiroshi (incorrect cost attributed to OR clauses
after multiple passes through set_rest_selec()). I think the code
was trying to allow selectivities of OR subclauses to be passed in
from outside, but noplace was actually passing any useful data, and
set_rest_selec() was passing wrong data.
Restructure representation of "indexqual" in IndexPath nodes so that
it is the same as for indxqual in completed IndexScan nodes: namely,
a toplevel list with an entry for each pass of the index scan, having
sublists that are implicitly-ANDed index qual conditions for that pass.
You don't want to know what the old representation was :-(
Improve documentation of OR-clause indexscan functions.
Remove useless 'notclause' field from RestrictInfo nodes. (This might
force an initdb for anyone who has stored rules containing RestrictInfos,
but I do not think that RestrictInfo ever appears in completed plans.)
Subject: [HACKERS] linux/alpha patches
These patches lay the groundwork for a Linux/Alpha port. The port doesn't
actually work unless you tweak the linker to put all the pointers in the
first 32 bits of the address space, but it's at least a start. It
implements the test-and-set instruction in Alpha assembly, and also fixes
a lot of pointer-to-integer conversions, which is probably good anyway.
Tom Lane
Bruce Momjian
Vadim B. Mikheev
Marc G. Fournier