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Tom Lane 7151e72d7f Improve speed of aggregates that use array_append as transition function.
In the previous coding, if an aggregate's transition function returned an
expanded array, nodeAgg.c and nodeWindowAgg.c would always copy it and thus
force it into the flat representation.  This led to ping-ponging between
flat and expanded formats, which costs a lot.  For an aggregate using
array_append as transition function, I measured about a 15X slowdown
compared to the pre-9.5 code, when working on simple int[] arrays.
Of course, the old code was already O(N^2) in this usage due to copying
flat arrays all the time, but it wasn't quite this inefficient.

To fix, teach nodeAgg.c and nodeWindowAgg.c to allow expanded transition
values without copying, so long as the transition function takes care to
return the transition value already properly parented under the aggcontext.
That puts a bit of extra responsibility on the transition function, but
doing it this way allows us to not need any extra logic in the fast path
of advance_transition_function (ie, with a pass-by-value transition value,
or with a modified-in-place pass-by-reference value).  We already know
that that's a hot spot so I'm loath to add any cycles at all there.  Also,
while only array_append currently knows how to follow this convention,
this solution allows other transition functions to opt-in without needing
to have a whitelist in the core aggregation code.

(The reason we would need a whitelist is that currently, if you pass a
R/W expanded-object pointer to an arbitrary function, it's allowed to do
anything with it including deleting it; that breaks the core agg code's
assumption that it should free discarded values.  Returning a value under
aggcontext is the transition function's signal that it knows it is an
aggregate transition function and will play nice.  Possibly the API rules
for expanded objects should be refined, but that would not be a
back-patchable change.)

With this fix, an aggregate using array_append is no longer O(N^2), so it's
much faster than pre-9.5 code rather than much slower.  It's still a bit
slower than the bespoke infrastructure for array_agg, but the differential
seems to be only about 10%-20% rather than orders of magnitude.

Discussion: <6315.1477677885@sss.pgh.pa.us>
2016-10-30 12:27:41 -04:00
config Fix configure's incorrect version tests for flex and perl. 2016-05-02 11:18:10 -04:00
contrib Correct logical decoding restore behaviour for subtransactions. 2016-10-03 22:13:10 -07:00
doc Improve speed of aggregates that use array_append as transition function. 2016-10-30 12:27:41 -04:00
src Improve speed of aggregates that use array_append as transition function. 2016-10-30 12:27:41 -04:00
.dir-locals.el emacs: Set indent-tabs-mode in perl-mode 2015-04-12 23:53:23 -04:00
.gitattributes Add functions for dealing with PGP armor header lines to pgcrypto. 2014-10-01 16:03:39 +03:00
.gitignore Improve speed of make check-world 2015-04-23 08:59:52 -04:00
aclocal.m4 Revert changes to pthread configure tests on REL9_5_STABLE. 2015-07-09 10:59:10 +03:00
configure Stamp 9.5.5. 2016-10-24 16:10:50 -04:00
configure.in Stamp 9.5.5. 2016-10-24 16:10:50 -04:00
COPYRIGHT Update copyright for 2016 2016-01-02 13:33:39 -05:00
GNUmakefile.in Fix distclean/maintainer-clean targets to remove top-level tmp_install dir. 2015-05-13 18:48:05 -04:00
HISTORY Improve text of stub HISTORY file. 2014-02-12 18:16:17 -05:00
Makefile
README Don't generate plain-text HISTORY and src/test/regress/README anymore. 2014-02-10 20:48:04 -05:00
README.git Don't generate plain-text HISTORY and src/test/regress/README anymore. 2014-02-10 20:48:04 -05:00

PostgreSQL Database Management System
=====================================

This directory contains the source code distribution of the PostgreSQL
database management system.

PostgreSQL is an advanced object-relational database management system
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PostgreSQL has many language interfaces, many of which are listed here:

	http://www.postgresql.org/download

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