Re: Partial index on date column - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Tom Lane
Subject Re: Partial index on date column
Date
Msg-id 27982.1047015549@sss.pgh.pa.us
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Partial index on date column  ("Christopher Kings-Lynne" <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au>)
List pgsql-hackers
"Christopher Kings-Lynne" <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au> writes:
>> Partial-index condition matching is a horribly difficult problem in
>> general, and we only attempt a few limited cases right now.

> Is it worth hard-coding in the IS NOT NULL case?

Damifino.  I have no fundamental objection to doing so --- but I'd want
to see some sort of cost-benefit argument showing that it wouldn't be
a net loss on average.  It's real easy to blow a few cycles on every
query looking for cases that don't show up often enough to justify the
distributed cost :-(.

It helps a lot if you can put in short-circuits that prevent the
matching work from being done on simple queries.  For example, the
parser/rewriter/planner take care to keep track of whether a query
contains any sub-SELECTs, and if you look in the planner you will notice
quite a lot of work that gets short-circuited when there aren't any.
I'm not sure how to make a short-circuit test for this case, however.
        regards, tom lane


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