Re: planer picks a bad plan (seq-scan instead of index) - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Richard Huxton
Subject Re: planer picks a bad plan (seq-scan instead of index)
Date
Msg-id 45532A8E.9040104@archonet.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: planer picks a bad plan (seq-scan instead of index)  ("Thomas H." <me@alternize.com>)
List pgsql-general
Thomas H. wrote:
>> OK - in that case try explicit subqueries:
>>
>> SELECT ... FROM
>> (SELECT * FROM shop.dvds
>>  LEFT JOIN shop.oldtables.movies
>>  WHERE lower(mov_name) LIKE ...
>> ) AS bar
>> LEFT JOIN shop.data_soundmedia
>
>
> same result, have tried this as well (22sec). it's the LEFT JOIN
> shop.data_soundmedia for which the planer picks a seqscan instead of
> index scan, no matter what...

Two things to try:
1. "SET enable_seqscan = false" and see if that forces it. If not
there's something very odd
2. Try adding a LIMIT 99 to the inner query (bar) so PG knows how many
(few) rows will emerge.

I'm guessing we're up against PG's poor estimate on the '%...%' filter.
If you were getting 160,000 rows in the final result then a seq-scan
might well be the way to go.

The only workaround that I can think of (if we can't persuade the
planner to cooperate) is to build a temp-table containing dvd_ean's for
the first part of the query then analyse it and join against that. That
way PG's row estimate will be accurate regardless of your text filtering.

--
   Richard Huxton
   Archonet Ltd

pgsql-general by date:

Previous
From: Sean Davis
Date:
Subject: Re: Table design - unknown number of column
Next
From: Alvaro Herrera
Date:
Subject: Re: autovacuum blues