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.
are all in new-in-8.2 logic associated with indexability of ScalarArrayOpExpr
(IN-clauses) or amortization of indexscan costs across repeated indexscans
on the inside of a nestloop. In particular:
Fix some logic errors in the estimation for multiple scans induced by a
ScalarArrayOpExpr indexqual.
Include a small cost component in bitmap index scans to reflect the costs of
manipulating the bitmap itself; this is mainly to prevent a bitmap scan from
appearing to have the same cost as a plain indexscan for fetching a single
tuple.
Also add a per-index-scan-startup CPU cost component; while prior releases
were clearly too pessimistic about the cost of repeated indexscans, the
original 8.2 coding allowed the cost of an indexscan to effectively go to zero
if repeated often enough, which is overly optimistic.
Pay some attention to index correlation when estimating costs for a nestloop
inner indexscan: this is significant when the plan fetches multiple heap
tuples per iteration, since high correlation means those tuples are probably
on the same or adjacent heap pages.
accurately: we have to distinguish the effects of the join's own ON
clauses from the effects of pushed-down clauses. Failing to do so
was a quick hack long ago, but it's time to be smarter. Per example
from Thomas H.
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.
(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.
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.
ScalarArrayOpExpr index quals: we were estimating the right total
number of rows returned, but treating the index-access part of the
cost as if a single scan were fetching that many consecutive index
tuples. Actually we should treat it as a multiple indexscan, and
if there are enough of 'em the Mackert-Lohman discount should kick in.
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.
cost_nonsequential_access() is really totally inappropriate for its only
remaining use, namely estimating I/O costs in cost_sort(). The routine
was designed on the assumption that disk caching might eliminate the need
for some re-reads on a random basis, but there's nothing very random in
that sense about sort's access pattern --- it'll always be picking up the
oldest outputs. If we had a good fix on the effective cache size we
might consider charging zero for I/O unless the sort temp file size
exceeds it, but that's probably putting much too much faith in the
parameter. Instead just drop the logic in favor of a fixed compromise
between seq_page_cost and random_page_cost per page of sort I/O.
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.
with fixed merge order (fixed number of "tapes") was based on obsolete
assumptions, namely that tape drives are expensive. Since our "tapes"
are really just a couple of buffers, we can have a lot of them given
adequate workspace. This allows reduction of the number of merge passes
with consequent savings of I/O during large sorts.
Simon Riggs with some rework by Tom Lane
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.
(previously we only did = and <> correctly). Also, allow row comparisons
with any operators that are in btree opclasses, not only those with these
specific names. This gets rid of a whole lot of indefensible assumptions
about the behavior of particular operators based on their names ... though
it's still true that IN and NOT IN expand to "= ANY". The patch adds a
RowCompareExpr expression node type, and makes some changes in the
representation of ANY/ALL/ROWCOMPARE SubLinks so that they can share code
with RowCompareExpr.
I have not yet done anything about making RowCompareExpr an indexable
operator, but will look at that soon.
initdb forced due to changes in stored rules.
"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.
comment line where output as too long, and update typedefs for /lib
directory. Also fix case where identifiers were used as variable names
in the backend, but as typedefs in ecpg (favor the backend for
indenting).
Backpatch to 8.1.X.
a new PlannerInfo struct, which is passed around instead of the bare
Query in all the planning code. This commit is essentially just a
code-beautification exercise, but it does open the door to making
larger changes to the planner data structures without having to muck
with the widely-known Query struct.
but the code is basically working. Along the way, rewrite the entire
approach to processing OR index conditions, and make it work in join
cases for the first time ever. orindxpath.c is now basically obsolete,
but I left it in for the time being to allow easy comparison testing
against the old implementation.
logic operations during planning. Seems cleaner to create two new Path
node types, instead --- this avoids duplication of cost-estimation code.
Also, create an enable_bitmapscan GUC parameter to control use of bitmap
plans.
scans, using in-memory tuple ID bitmaps as the intermediary. The planner
frontend (path creation and cost estimation) is not there yet, so none
of this code can be executed. I have tested it using some hacked planner
code that is far too ugly to see the light of day, however. Committing
now so that the bulk of the infrastructure changes go in before the tree
drifts under me.
access: define new index access method functions 'amgetmulti' that can
fetch multiple TIDs per call. (The functions exist but are totally
untested as yet.) Since I was modifying pg_am anyway, remove the
no-longer-needed 'rel' parameter from amcostestimate functions, and
also remove the vestigial amowner column that was creating useless
work for Alvaro's shared-object-dependencies project.
Initdb forced due to changes in pg_am.
structs. There are many places in the planner where we were passing
both a rel and an index to subroutines, and now need only pass the
index struct. Notationally simpler, and perhaps a tad faster.
on-the-fly, and thereby avoid blowing out memory when the planner has
underestimated the hash table size. Hash join will now obey the
work_mem limit with some faithfulness. Per my recent proposal
(hash aggregate part isn't done yet though).
Also performed an initial run through of upgrading our Copyright date to
extend to 2005 ... first run here was very simple ... change everything
where: grep 1996-2004 && the word 'Copyright' ... scanned through the
generated list with 'less' first, and after, to make sure that I only
picked up the right entries ...
In particular, there was a mathematical tie between the two possible
nestloop-with-materialized-inner-scan plans for a join (ie, we computed
the same cost with either input on the inside), resulting in a roundoff
error driven choice, if the relations were both small enough to fit in
sort_mem. Add a small cost factor to ensure we prefer materializing the
smaller input. This changes several regression test plans, but with any
luck we will now have more stability across platforms.
1. Solve the problem of not having TOAST references hiding inside composite
values by establishing the rule that toasting only goes one level deep:
a tuple can contain toasted fields, but a composite-type datum that is
to be inserted into a tuple cannot. Enforcing this in heap_formtuple
is relatively cheap and it avoids a large increase in the cost of running
the tuptoaster during final storage of a row.
2. Fix some interesting problems in expansion of inherited queries that
reference whole-row variables. We never really did this correctly before,
but it's now relatively painless to solve by expanding the parent's
whole-row Var into a RowExpr() selecting the proper columns from the
child.
If you dike out the preventive check in CheckAttributeType(),
composite-type columns now seem to actually work. However, we surely
cannot ship them like this --- without I/O for composite types, you
can't get pg_dump to dump tables containing them. So a little more
work still to do.
In the past, we used a 'Lispy' linked list implementation: a "list" was
merely a pointer to the head node of the list. The problem with that
design is that it makes lappend() and length() linear time. This patch
fixes that problem (and others) by maintaining a count of the list
length and a pointer to the tail node along with each head node pointer.
A "list" is now a pointer to a structure containing some meta-data
about the list; the head and tail pointers in that structure refer
to ListCell structures that maintain the actual linked list of nodes.
The function names of the list API have also been changed to, I hope,
be more logically consistent. By default, the old function names are
still available; they will be disabled-by-default once the rest of
the tree has been updated to use the new API names.
That particular corner case is not exactly compelling, but given 7.4's
ability to discard redundant join clauses, it is possible for the situation
to arise from queries that are not so obviously silly. Per bug report
of 6-Apr-04.
corner cases that could stand improvement, but it does all the basic
stuff. A byproduct is that the selectivity routines are no longer
constrained to working on simple Vars; we might in future be able to
improve the behavior for subexpressions that don't match indexes.
Make btree index creation and initial validation of foreign-key constraints
use maintenance_work_mem rather than work_mem as their memory limit.
Add some code to guc.c to allow these variables to be referenced by their
old names in SHOW and SET commands, for backwards compatibility.
Bruce Momjian
Tom Lane
Joe Conway
Peter Eisentraut
PostgreSQL Daemon
Neil Conway