Re: accounting for memory used for BufFile during hash joins

Tomas Vondra <tomas.vondra@2ndquadrant.com> writes:
> On Mon, May 06, 2019 at 11:18:28PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
>> Tomas Vondra <tomas.vondra@2ndquadrant.com> writes:
>>> Do we actually check how many duplicates are there during planning?

>> Certainly that's part of the planner's cost estimates ... but it's
>> only as good as the planner's statistical knowledge.

> I'm looking at the code, and the only place where I see code dealing with
> MCVs (probably the best place for info about duplicate values) is
> estimate_hash_bucketsize in final_cost_hashjoin.

What I'm thinking of is this bit in final_cost_hashjoin:

    /*
     * If the bucket holding the inner MCV would exceed work_mem, we don't
     * want to hash unless there is really no other alternative, so apply
     * disable_cost.  (The executor normally copes with excessive memory usage
     * by splitting batches, but obviously it cannot separate equal values
     * that way, so it will be unable to drive the batch size below work_mem
     * when this is true.)
     */
    if (relation_byte_size(clamp_row_est(inner_path_rows * innermcvfreq),
                           inner_path->pathtarget->width) >
        (work_mem * 1024L))
        startup_cost += disable_cost;

It's certainly likely that that logic needs improvement in view of this
discussion --- I was just pushing back on the claim that we weren't
considering the issue at all.

            regards, tom lane