Re: select vs cursor/fetch speed disparity - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Bosco Rama
Subject Re: select vs cursor/fetch speed disparity
Date
Msg-id 4E93198F.5090001@boscorama.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: select vs cursor/fetch speed disparity  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
Responses Re: select vs cursor/fetch speed disparity  (Bosco Rama <postgres@boscorama.com>)
List pgsql-general
Hi Tom,

Tom Lane wrote:
> Bosco Rama <postgres@boscorama.com> writes:
>> I have a strange disparity between a query that is run as a
>> straight select and the same query via a cursor.  I hope I can
>> jog someone's memory with the description as I have been unable
>> to create a sanitized and/or reduced data set & schema that will
>> reproduce this ... so far. :-(
>
> Cursors are biased towards fast-start plans on the theory that you
> may not be intending to fetch the whole result.  Queries with ORDER BY
> and/or LIMIT are particularly likely to see plan changes as a
> consequence of that.  In 8.4 and up you can frob the
> cursor_tuple_fraction setting to adjust this preference.  Use
> "EXPLAIN query" vs "EXPLAIN DECLARE CURSOR FOR query" to see what
> sort of plan you're getting.

I'll take a look at that setting and try the two 'explain's.  However,
would that really account for an increase in time by a factor of ~630?
Just wondering.

(BTW, I'm still working on a public version of the data & schema that
reproduce this.)

Bosco.

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