Hi,
Finally found the problem.
Turning off nested loops gave me much better performance on 8.3 than 8.1.
The problem seems to come from postgresql miscalculation of the number of rows returned by nested loops.
It is well described in that thread:
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-performance/2008-03/msg00371.php In my case, it was by a factor of 20000.
Of course, I can't turn off nested loop in my database,
it will impact performance on small tables too much...
So there is no easy fix for that, it seems,
beside playing with per-column statistics-gathering target maybe?
Patrick
Gregory Williamson wrote:
Patrick Vachon wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> I've got a query that is running slower on 8.3 than on 8.1 (with
> equivalent server config),
> because the join ordering is not the same, at least that's my guess... ;-)
>
> In 8.1.4, table A had 122880 pages, B 112690 pages and C 80600 pages.
> Now in 8.3.3, table A has only 77560 pages, B 69580 but C remains at
> 80600 pages.
>
> In 8.1 the tables were joined in that way (using explain analyse):
> C join A join B
> now in 8.3:
> B join A join C
> Beside that, the plan is very similar, but the indexes used are not the
> same.
>
> Could the number of disk pages of a table influence the
> order in which it is joined, even when it is scanned with an index?
>
> I'm pretty sure it is because of the reduced table sizes,
> since the server configuration is the same.
>
> Thoughts?
8.3 has fewer automatic casts to text types; perhaps you have indexes which are not being used because of mismatched types ? Perhaps an EXPLAIN ANALYZE from both, if possible, would clairfy.
HTH,
Greg Williamson
Senior DBA
DigitalGlobe
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