postgresql/src/backend/utils
Tomas Vondra db0d67db24 Optimize order of GROUP BY keys
When evaluating a query with a multi-column GROUP BY clause using sort,
the cost may be heavily dependent on the order in which the keys are
compared when building the groups. Grouping does not imply any ordering,
so we're allowed to compare the keys in arbitrary order, and a Hash Agg
leverages this. But for Group Agg, we simply compared keys in the order
as specified in the query. This commit explores alternative ordering of
the keys, trying to find a cheaper one.

In principle, we might generate grouping paths for all permutations of
the keys, and leave the rest to the optimizer. But that might get very
expensive, so we try to pick only a couple interesting orderings based
on both local and global information.

When planning the grouping path, we explore statistics (number of
distinct values, cost of the comparison function) for the keys and
reorder them to minimize comparison costs. Intuitively, it may be better
to perform more expensive comparisons (for complex data types etc.)
last, because maybe the cheaper comparisons will be enough. Similarly,
the higher the cardinality of a key, the lower the probability we’ll
need to compare more keys. The patch generates and costs various
orderings, picking the cheapest ones.

The ordering of group keys may interact with other parts of the query,
some of which may not be known while planning the grouping. E.g. there
may be an explicit ORDER BY clause, or some other ordering-dependent
operation, higher up in the query, and using the same ordering may allow
using either incremental sort or even eliminate the sort entirely.

The patch generates orderings and picks those minimizing the comparison
cost (for various pathkeys), and then adds orderings that might be
useful for operations higher up in the plan (ORDER BY, etc.). Finally,
it always keeps the ordering specified in the query, on the assumption
the user might have additional insights.

This introduces a new GUC enable_group_by_reordering, so that the
optimization may be disabled if needed.

The original patch was proposed by Teodor Sigaev, and later improved and
reworked by Dmitry Dolgov. Reviews by a number of people, including me,
Andrey Lepikhov, Claudio Freire, Ibrar Ahmed and Zhihong Yu.

Author: Dmitry Dolgov, Teodor Sigaev, Tomas Vondra
Reviewed-by: Tomas Vondra, Andrey Lepikhov, Claudio Freire, Ibrar Ahmed, Zhihong Yu
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/7c79e6a5-8597-74e8-0671-1c39d124c9d6%40sigaev.ru
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CA%2Bq6zcW_4o2NC0zutLkOJPsFt80megSpX_dVRo6GK9PC-Jx_Ag%40mail.gmail.com
2022-03-31 01:13:33 +02:00
..
activity Add new block-by-block strategy for CREATE DATABASE. 2022-03-29 11:48:36 -04:00
adt Optimize order of GROUP BY keys 2022-03-31 01:13:33 +02:00
cache Add new block-by-block strategy for CREATE DATABASE. 2022-03-29 11:48:36 -04:00
error Introduce log_destination=jsonlog 2022-01-17 10:16:53 +09:00
fmgr Refactor DLSUFFIX handling 2022-03-25 08:56:02 +01:00
hash Update copyright for 2022 2022-01-07 19:04:57 -05:00
init Add option to use ICU as global locale provider 2022-03-17 11:13:16 +01:00
mb Update copyright for 2022 2022-01-07 19:04:57 -05:00
misc Optimize order of GROUP BY keys 2022-03-31 01:13:33 +02:00
mmgr Create routine able to set single-call SRFs for Materialize mode 2022-03-07 10:26:29 +09:00
resowner Update copyright for 2022 2022-01-07 19:04:57 -05:00
sort Add UNIQUE null treatment option 2022-02-03 11:48:21 +01:00
time Clean up assorted failures under clang's -fsanitize=undefined checks. 2022-03-03 18:13:24 -05:00
.gitignore Rearrange makefile rules for running Gen_fmgrtab.pl. 2018-05-03 17:54:18 -04:00
errcodes.txt Update copyright for 2022 2022-01-07 19:04:57 -05:00
Gen_dummy_probes.pl Update copyright for 2022 2022-01-07 19:04:57 -05:00
Gen_dummy_probes.pl.prolog Update copyright for 2022 2022-01-07 19:04:57 -05:00
Gen_dummy_probes.sed Update copyright for 2022 2022-01-07 19:04:57 -05:00
Gen_fmgrtab.pl Update copyright for 2022 2022-01-07 19:04:57 -05:00
generate-errcodes.pl Update copyright for 2022 2022-01-07 19:04:57 -05:00
Makefile Correct Makefile dependencies for catalog scripts 2022-02-14 09:07:09 +07:00
probes.d Update copyright for 2022 2022-01-07 19:04:57 -05:00
README.Gen_dummy_probes Tweak generation of Gen_dummy_probes.pl 2021-05-11 20:02:02 -04:00

# Generating dummy probes

If Postgres isn't configured with dtrace enabled, we need to generate
dummy probes for the entries in probes.d, that do nothing.

This is accomplished in Unix via the sed script `Gen_dummy_probes.sed`. We
used to use this in MSVC builds using the perl utility `psed`, which mimicked
sed. However, that utility disappeared from Windows perl distributions and so
we converted the sed script to a perl script to be used in MSVC builds.

We still keep the sed script as the authoritative source for generating
these dummy probes because except on Windows perl is not a hard requirement
when building from a tarball.

So, if you need to change the way dummy probes are generated, first change
the sed script, and when it's working generate the perl script. This can
be accomplished by using the perl utility s2p.

s2p is no longer part of the perl core, so it might not be on your system,
but it is available on CPAN and also in many package systems. e.g.
on Fedora it can be installed using `cpan App::s2p` or
`dnf install perl-App-s2p`.

The Makefile contains a recipe for regenerating Gen_dummy_probes.pl, so all
you need to do is once you have s2p installed is `make Gen_dummy_probes.pl`
Note that in a VPATH build this will generate the file in the vpath tree,
not the source tree.