Re: Expression transformation curiosity

On Sun, Aug 17, 2003 at 11:32:58AM +0100, Richard Huxton wrote:
> I just had a look at EXPLAIN ANALYSE output for an SQL function I'm trying to 
> write. The WHERE clause wasn't too complex, but the explain output took up a 
> dozen lines.
> 
> Boiling the problem down, I've looked at a clause of the form:
>   a OR (b AND c)
> which PG converts to:
>   (a OR b) AND (a OR c)
> 
> Now these two are equivalent, but it would take me forever to demonstrate that 
> with the full query. I'm happy the planner is going to get it right, but I'm 
> confused as to why the transformation occurs.
> 
> Is it an artefact of displaying the EXPLAIN, or is it actually processed that 
> way? You could see how testing "a" twice could be expensive in some 
> situations.

Looks like it actually works this way.
I had the same problem several weeks ago on 7.3.3 with 4 such OR's.
The final filter became monsterous, and the query was very slow.

I've simply rewritten the query using UNION, and it became much faster.


-- 
Fduch M. Pravking