Re: Planner hints in Postgresql

On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 1:45 PM, Pavel Stehule <pavel.stehule@gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't believe so SELECTIVITY can work well too. Slow queries are usually
> related to some strange points in data. I am thinking so well concept should
> be based on validity of estimations. Some plans are based on totally wrong
> estimation, but should be fast due less sensitivity to bad estimations. So
> well concept is penalization some risk plans - or use brute force - like
> COLUMN store engine does. Their plan is usually simply and tolerant to bad
> estimations.

Disagree.  There is a special case of slow query where problem is not
with the data but with the expression over the data; something in the
query defeats sampled selectivity.  Common culprits are:

*) CASE expressions
*) COALESCE
*) casts
*) simple tranformational expressions
*) predicate string concatenation

When using those expressions, you often end up with default
selectivity assumptions and if they are way off -- watch out.

Plan risk analysis solves a different problem: small changes in the
data mean big changes in the execution runtime.  It probably wouldn't
even help cases where the server thinks there is one row and you
actually have thousands or millions unless you want to implement a
selectivity range with perhaps a risk coefficient.  This was also
suggested sometime back and was also met with some skepticism (but
it'd be interesting to see!).

merlin