Optimizing aggregates - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

I've been profiling simple aggregate queries, looking for any
low-hanging fruit. For this query:


-- setup
create table floats as select g::float8 as a, g::float8 as b, g::float8
as c from generate_series(1, 10000000) g;
vacuum freeze floats;

-- query
select sum(a), sum(b+c) from floats;


perf report says:

# Children      Self  Command     Shared Object      Symbol

# ........  ........  ..........  .................
........................................
#
     25.70%     0.00%  postmaster  [unknown]          [k] 0000000000000000
     14.23%    13.75%  postmaster  postgres           [.] ExecProject
     11.18%    10.57%  postmaster  postgres           [.] slot_deform_tuple
      9.58%     9.04%  postmaster  postgres           [.] advance_aggregates
      8.96%     0.00%  postmaster  [unknown]          [.] 0x00000000000298d4
      8.77%     8.42%  postmaster  postgres           [.]
ExecMakeFunctionResultNoSets
      7.78%     0.00%  postmaster  [unknown]          [.] 0x0000000001d38260
      6.63%     6.15%  postmaster  postgres           [.]
advance_transition_function
      6.61%     0.00%  postmaster  [unknown]          [.] 0x0000000001e99e40
      6.47%     0.00%  postmaster  libc-2.23.so       [.] __GI___libc_read
      6.24%     5.88%  postmaster  postgres           [.] heap_getnext
      4.62%     4.62%  postmaster  [kernel.kallsyms]  [k]
copy_user_enhanced_fast_string
      3.91%     3.82%  postmaster  postgres           [.] slot_getsomeattrs
      3.29%     3.18%  postmaster  postgres           [.] slot_getattr
      3.06%     3.00%  postmaster  postgres           [.] ExecClearTuple
      2.59%     0.00%  postmaster  [unknown]          [.] 0x0000000001e9a370
      2.57%     2.45%  postmaster  postgres           [.] ExecScan
      2.56%     2.37%  postmaster  postgres           [.] float8pl
      2.54%     2.43%  postmaster  postgres           [.] heapgetpage
      2.25%     2.17%  postmaster  postgres           [.] ExecAgg
      2.10%     1.96%  postmaster  postgres           [.] ExecStoreTuple
      2.00%     1.91%  postmaster  postgres           [.] ExecProcNode

ExecProject stands out. I find that pretty surprising.

We're using ExecProject to extract the arguments from the input tuples,
to pass to the aggregate transition functions. It looks like that's a
pretty expensive way of doing it, for a typical aggregate that takes
only one argument.

We actually used to call ExecEvalExpr() directly for each argument, but
that was changed by the patch that added support for ordered set
aggregates. It looks like that was a bad idea, from a performance point
of view.

I propose that we go back to calling ExecEvalExpr() directly, for
non-ordered aggregates, per the attached patch. That makes that example
query about 10% faster on my laptop, which is in line with the fact that
ExecProject() accounted for about 13% of the CPU time.

Another idea is that maybe we should add a fast-path to ExecProject(),
for these trivial cases.

- Heikki