Re: PATCH: index-only scans with partial indexes - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Kyotaro HORIGUCHI
Subject Re: PATCH: index-only scans with partial indexes
Date
Msg-id 20150914.163550.166458475.horiguchi.kyotaro@lab.ntt.co.jp
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: PATCH: index-only scans with partial indexes  (Tomas Vondra <tomas.vondra@2ndquadrant.com>)
Responses Re: PATCH: index-only scans with partial indexes  (Tomas Vondra <tomas.vondra@2ndquadrant.com>)
List pgsql-hackers
Hi,

At Sun, 13 Sep 2015 23:21:30 +0200, Tomas Vondra <tomas.vondra@2ndquadrant.com> wrote in
<55F5E8DA.8080303@2ndquadrant.com>
> That's indeed strange, but after poking into that for a while, it
> seems rather like a costing issue. Let me demonstrate:
...
> Now, both plans are index only scans, but the first one has Index Cond
> and the other one does not!

The seemingly removed IndexCond qual is counted as non-index
quals at the last in cost_index. The quals that the partial index
implies should be ignored on cost_estimation.

> I've put a bunch of logging into cost_index(), and turns out that
> while the final cost is *exactly* the same, it's most likely by
> chance. After we call amcostestimate, we get these two results:

So it is *not by chance* but a stable behavior defined by
algorithm.

> It seems that the problem is related to this:
> 
>     qpquals
>         = extract_nonindex_conditions(baserel->baserestrictinfo,
>                                       path->indexquals);
> 
> while the "larger" index on (a,b) gets
> 
>     path->indexquals=(b BETWEEN 300000 AND 600000)
>     qpquals=NIL
> 
> the "smaller" index on (a) gets
> 
>     path->indexquals=NIL
>     qpquals=(b BETWEEN 300000 AND 600000)
> 
> And so the larger index gets qpqual_cost=0, the smaller one gets
> qpqual_cost=0.005, and so cpu_per_tuple is either 0.01 or 0.015.
> 
> Which is exactly the difference between costs from amcostestimate
> 
> idx1: 4769.115000 + 0.015 * 297823 = 9236.460000
> idx2: 6258.230000 + 0.010 * 297823 = 9236.460000

These calculations are exactly right, but you overlooked the
breakedown of indexTotalCost for idx2.

> Sppoky! Although it seems like a mere coincidence, thanks to the nice
> round numbers of tuples in the table, and lucky choice of two
> conditions.

As said above, it is not a conincidence. The exactly same
calculation about baserestrictinfo is simply calculated in
different places, cost_index for the former and
btcostestiamte(genericcostestimate) for the latter.

We should properly ignore or remove the implicitly-applied quals
for partial indexes on cost estimation.

regards,

-- 
Kyotaro Horiguchi
NTT Open Source Software Center




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