Commit 1cc29fe7c, which taught EXPLAIN to print PARAM_EXEC Params as the referenced expressions, included some checks to prevent matching Params found in SubPlans or InitPlans to NestLoopParams of upper query levels. At the time, this seemed possibly necessary to avoid false matches because of the planner's habit of re-using the same PARAM_EXEC slot in multiple places in a plan. Furthermore, in the absence of LATERAL no such reference could be valid anyway. But it's possible now that we have LATERAL, and in the wake of 46c508fbc and 1db5667ba I believe the false-match hazard is gone. Hence, remove the in_same_plan_level checks. As shown in the regression test changes, this provides a useful improvement in readability for EXPLAIN of LATERAL-using subplans. Richard Guo, reviewed by Greg Stark and myself Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAMbWs4-YSOcQXAagJetP95cAeZPqzOy5kM5yijG0PVW5ztRb4w@mail.gmail.com
This allows aliases for sub-SELECTs and VALUES clauses in the FROM clause to be omitted. This is an extension of the SQL standard, supported by some other database systems, and so eases the transition from such systems, as well as removing the minor inconvenience caused by requiring these aliases. Patch by me, reviewed by Tom Lane. Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAEZATCUCGCf82=hxd9N5n6xGHPyYpQnxW8HneeH+uP7yNALkWA@mail.gmail.com
The need for this was foreseen long ago, but when record_eq actually became hashable (in commit 01e658fa7), we missed updating this spot. Per bug #17363 from Elvis Pranskevichus. Back-patch to v14 where the faulty commit came in. Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/17363-f6d42fd0d726be02@postgresql.org
Memoize would always use the hash equality operator for the cache key types to determine if the current set of parameters were the same as some previously cached set. Certain types such as floating points where -0.0 and +0.0 differ in their binary representation but are classed as equal by the hash equality operator may cause problems as unless the join uses the same operator it's possible that whichever join operator is being used would be able to distinguish the two values. In which case we may accidentally return in the incorrect rows out of the cache. To fix this here we add a binary mode to Memoize to allow it to the current set of parameters to previously cached values by comparing bit-by-bit rather than logically using the hash equality operator. This binary mode is always used for LATERAL joins and it's used for normal joins when any of the join operators are not hashable. Reported-by: Tom Lane Author: David Rowley Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/3004308.1632952496@sss.pgh.pa.us Backpatch-through: 14, where Memoize was added
It's possible for us to copy an AlternativeSubPlan expression node into multiple places, for example the scan quals of several partition children. Then it's possible that we choose a different one of the alternatives as optimal in each place. Commit 41efb8340 failed to consider this scenario, so its attempt to remove "unused" subplans could remove subplans that were still used elsewhere. Fix by delaying the removal logic until we've examined all the AlternativeSubPlans in a given query level. (This does assume that AlternativeSubPlans couldn't get copied to other query levels, but for the foreseeable future that's fine; cf qual_is_pushdown_safe.) Per report from Rajkumar Raghuwanshi. Back-patch to v14 where the faulty logic came in. Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAKcux6==O3NNZC3bZ2prRYv3cjm3_Zw1GfzmOjEVqYN4jub2+Q@mail.gmail.com
"Result Cache" was never a great name for this node, but nobody managed to come up with another name that anyone liked enough. That was until David Johnston mentioned "Node Memoization", which Tom Lane revised to just "Memoize". People seem to like "Memoize", so let's do the rename. Reviewed-by: Justin Pryzby Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/20210708165145.GG1176@momjian.us Backpatch-through: 14, where Result Cache was introduced
Here we add a new executor node type named "Result Cache". The planner can include this node type in the plan to have the executor cache the results from the inner side of parameterized nested loop joins. This allows caching of tuples for sets of parameters so that in the event that the node sees the same parameter values again, it can just return the cached tuples instead of rescanning the inner side of the join all over again. Internally, result cache uses a hash table in order to quickly find tuples that have been previously cached. For certain data sets, this can significantly improve the performance of joins. The best cases for using this new node type are for join problems where a large portion of the tuples from the inner side of the join have no join partner on the outer side of the join. In such cases, hash join would have to hash values that are never looked up, thus bloating the hash table and possibly causing it to multi-batch. Merge joins would have to skip over all of the unmatched rows. If we use a nested loop join with a result cache, then we only cache tuples that have at least one join partner on the outer side of the join. The benefits of using a parameterized nested loop with a result cache increase when there are fewer distinct values being looked up and the number of lookups of each value is large. Also, hash probes to lookup the cache can be much faster than the hash probe in a hash join as it's common that the result cache's hash table is much smaller than the hash join's due to result cache only caching useful tuples rather than all tuples from the inner side of the join. This variation in hash probe performance is more significant when the hash join's hash table no longer fits into the CPU's L3 cache, but the result cache's hash table does. The apparent "random" access of hash buckets with each hash probe can cause a poor L3 cache hit ratio for large hash tables. Smaller hash tables generally perform better. The hash table used for the cache limits itself to not exceeding work_mem * hash_mem_multiplier in size. We maintain a dlist of keys for this cache and when we're adding new tuples and realize we've exceeded the memory budget, we evict cache entries starting with the least recently used ones until we have enough memory to add the new tuples to the cache. For parameterized nested loop joins, we now consider using one of these result cache nodes in between the nested loop node and its inner node. We determine when this might be useful based on cost, which is primarily driven off of what the expected cache hit ratio will be. Estimating the cache hit ratio relies on having good distinct estimates on the nested loop's parameters. For now, the planner will only consider using a result cache for parameterized nested loop joins. This works for both normal joins and also for LATERAL type joins to subqueries. It is possible to use this new node for other uses in the future. For example, to cache results from correlated subqueries. However, that's not done here due to some difficulties obtaining a distinct estimation on the outer plan to calculate the estimated cache hit ratio. Currently we plan the inner plan before planning the outer plan so there is no good way to know if a result cache would be useful or not since we can't estimate the number of times the subplan will be called until the outer plan is generated. The functionality being added here is newly introducing a dependency on the return value of estimate_num_groups() during the join search. Previously, during the join search, we only ever needed to perform selectivity estimations. With this commit, we need to use estimate_num_groups() in order to estimate what the hit ratio on the result cache will be. In simple terms, if we expect 10 distinct values and we expect 1000 outer rows, then we'll estimate the hit ratio to be 99%. Since cache hits are very cheap compared to scanning the underlying nodes on the inner side of the nested loop join, then this will significantly reduce the planner's cost for the join. However, it's fairly easy to see here that things will go bad when estimate_num_groups() incorrectly returns a value that's significantly lower than the actual number of distinct values. If this happens then that may cause us to make use of a nested loop join with a result cache instead of some other join type, such as a merge or hash join. Our distinct estimations have been known to be a source of trouble in the past, so the extra reliance on them here could cause the planner to choose slower plans than it did previous to having this feature. Distinct estimations are also fairly hard to estimate accurately when several tables have been joined already or when a WHERE clause filters out a set of values that are correlated to the expressions we're estimating the number of distinct value for. For now, the costing we perform during query planning for result caches does put quite a bit of faith in the distinct estimations being accurate. When these are accurate then we should generally see faster execution times for plans containing a result cache. However, in the real world, we may find that we need to either change the costings to put less trust in the distinct estimations being accurate or perhaps even disable this feature by default. There's always an element of risk when we teach the query planner to do new tricks that it decides to use that new trick at the wrong time and causes a regression. Users may opt to get the old behavior by turning the feature off using the enable_resultcache GUC. Currently, this is enabled by default. It remains to be seen if we'll maintain that setting for the release. Additionally, the name "Result Cache" is the best name I could think of for this new node at the time I started writing the patch. Nobody seems to strongly dislike the name. A few people did suggest other names but no other name seemed to dominate in the brief discussion that there was about names. Let's allow the beta period to see if the current name pleases enough people. If there's some consensus on a better name, then we can change it before the release. Please see the 2nd discussion link below for the discussion on the "Result Cache" name. Author: David Rowley Reviewed-by: Andy Fan, Justin Pryzby, Zhihong Yu, Hou Zhijie Tested-By: Konstantin Knizhnik Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAApHDvrPcQyQdWERGYWx8J%2B2DLUNgXu%2BfOSbQ1UscxrunyXyrQ%40mail.gmail.com Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAApHDvq=yQXr5kqhRviT2RhNKwToaWr9JAN5t+5_PzhuRJ3wvg@mail.gmail.com
This removes "Add Result Cache executor node". It seems that something weird is going on with the tracking of cache hits and misses as highlighted by many buildfarm animals. It's not yet clear what the problem is as other parts of the plan indicate that the cache did work correctly, it's just the hits and misses that were being reported as 0. This is especially a bad time to have the buildfarm so broken, so reverting before too many more animals go red. Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAApHDvq_hydhfovm4=izgWs+C5HqEeRScjMbOgbpC-jRAeK3Yw@mail.gmail.com
Here we add a new executor node type named "Result Cache". The planner can include this node type in the plan to have the executor cache the results from the inner side of parameterized nested loop joins. This allows caching of tuples for sets of parameters so that in the event that the node sees the same parameter values again, it can just return the cached tuples instead of rescanning the inner side of the join all over again. Internally, result cache uses a hash table in order to quickly find tuples that have been previously cached. For certain data sets, this can significantly improve the performance of joins. The best cases for using this new node type are for join problems where a large portion of the tuples from the inner side of the join have no join partner on the outer side of the join. In such cases, hash join would have to hash values that are never looked up, thus bloating the hash table and possibly causing it to multi-batch. Merge joins would have to skip over all of the unmatched rows. If we use a nested loop join with a result cache, then we only cache tuples that have at least one join partner on the outer side of the join. The benefits of using a parameterized nested loop with a result cache increase when there are fewer distinct values being looked up and the number of lookups of each value is large. Also, hash probes to lookup the cache can be much faster than the hash probe in a hash join as it's common that the result cache's hash table is much smaller than the hash join's due to result cache only caching useful tuples rather than all tuples from the inner side of the join. This variation in hash probe performance is more significant when the hash join's hash table no longer fits into the CPU's L3 cache, but the result cache's hash table does. The apparent "random" access of hash buckets with each hash probe can cause a poor L3 cache hit ratio for large hash tables. Smaller hash tables generally perform better. The hash table used for the cache limits itself to not exceeding work_mem * hash_mem_multiplier in size. We maintain a dlist of keys for this cache and when we're adding new tuples and realize we've exceeded the memory budget, we evict cache entries starting with the least recently used ones until we have enough memory to add the new tuples to the cache. For parameterized nested loop joins, we now consider using one of these result cache nodes in between the nested loop node and its inner node. We determine when this might be useful based on cost, which is primarily driven off of what the expected cache hit ratio will be. Estimating the cache hit ratio relies on having good distinct estimates on the nested loop's parameters. For now, the planner will only consider using a result cache for parameterized nested loop joins. This works for both normal joins and also for LATERAL type joins to subqueries. It is possible to use this new node for other uses in the future. For example, to cache results from correlated subqueries. However, that's not done here due to some difficulties obtaining a distinct estimation on the outer plan to calculate the estimated cache hit ratio. Currently we plan the inner plan before planning the outer plan so there is no good way to know if a result cache would be useful or not since we can't estimate the number of times the subplan will be called until the outer plan is generated. The functionality being added here is newly introducing a dependency on the return value of estimate_num_groups() during the join search. Previously, during the join search, we only ever needed to perform selectivity estimations. With this commit, we need to use estimate_num_groups() in order to estimate what the hit ratio on the result cache will be. In simple terms, if we expect 10 distinct values and we expect 1000 outer rows, then we'll estimate the hit ratio to be 99%. Since cache hits are very cheap compared to scanning the underlying nodes on the inner side of the nested loop join, then this will significantly reduce the planner's cost for the join. However, it's fairly easy to see here that things will go bad when estimate_num_groups() incorrectly returns a value that's significantly lower than the actual number of distinct values. If this happens then that may cause us to make use of a nested loop join with a result cache instead of some other join type, such as a merge or hash join. Our distinct estimations have been known to be a source of trouble in the past, so the extra reliance on them here could cause the planner to choose slower plans than it did previous to having this feature. Distinct estimations are also fairly hard to estimate accurately when several tables have been joined already or when a WHERE clause filters out a set of values that are correlated to the expressions we're estimating the number of distinct value for. For now, the costing we perform during query planning for result caches does put quite a bit of faith in the distinct estimations being accurate. When these are accurate then we should generally see faster execution times for plans containing a result cache. However, in the real world, we may find that we need to either change the costings to put less trust in the distinct estimations being accurate or perhaps even disable this feature by default. There's always an element of risk when we teach the query planner to do new tricks that it decides to use that new trick at the wrong time and causes a regression. Users may opt to get the old behavior by turning the feature off using the enable_resultcache GUC. Currently, this is enabled by default. It remains to be seen if we'll maintain that setting for the release. Additionally, the name "Result Cache" is the best name I could think of for this new node at the time I started writing the patch. Nobody seems to strongly dislike the name. A few people did suggest other names but no other name seemed to dominate in the brief discussion that there was about names. Let's allow the beta period to see if the current name pleases enough people. If there's some consensus on a better name, then we can change it before the release. Please see the 2nd discussion link below for the discussion on the "Result Cache" name. Author: David Rowley Reviewed-by: Andy Fan, Justin Pryzby, Zhihong Yu Tested-By: Konstantin Knizhnik Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAApHDvrPcQyQdWERGYWx8J%2B2DLUNgXu%2BfOSbQ1UscxrunyXyrQ%40mail.gmail.com Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAApHDvq=yQXr5kqhRviT2RhNKwToaWr9JAN5t+5_PzhuRJ3wvg@mail.gmail.com
Many older tests where written in a style like
SELECT '' AS two, i.* FROM INT2_TBL
where the first column indicated the number of expected result rows.
This has gotten increasingly out of date, as the test data fixtures
have expanded, so a lot of these were wrong and misleading. Moreover,
this style isn't really necessary, since the psql output already shows
the number of result rows.
To clean this up, remove all those extra columns.
Discussion: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/1a25312b-2686-380d-3c67-7a69094a999f%40enterprisedb.com