Re: Shortcutting too-large offsets? - Mailing list pgsql-performance

From Tom Lane
Subject Re: Shortcutting too-large offsets?
Date
Msg-id 6843.1317393410@sss.pgh.pa.us
Whole thread Raw
In response to Shortcutting too-large offsets?  (Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>)
Responses Re: Shortcutting too-large offsets?
List pgsql-performance
Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:
> Here's a case which it seems like we ought to be able to optimize for:
> [ offset skips all the output of a sort node ]
> Is there some non-obvious reason which would make this kind of
> optimization difficult?  Doesn't the executor know at that point how
> many rows it has?

In principle, yeah, we could make it do that, but it seems like a likely
source of maintenance headaches.  This example is not exactly compelling
enough to make me want to do it.  Large OFFSETs are always going to be
problematic from a performance standpoint, and the fact that we could
short-circuit this one corner case isn't really going to make them much
more usable.

            regards, tom lane

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