Re: PoC: Partial sort - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From David Rowley
Subject Re: PoC: Partial sort
Date
Msg-id CAApHDvraq8KirPj96LQZKC5jxsN=9o2J-VV-L6ZoKyt1F0OzQg@mail.gmail.com
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In response to Re: PoC: Partial sort  (Alexander Korotkov <aekorotkov@gmail.com>)
Responses Re: PoC: Partial sort
List pgsql-hackers
On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 7:59 AM, Alexander Korotkov <aekorotkov@gmail.com> wrote:
Done. Patch is splitted. 

I've started to look at this, and for now I'm still finding my way around the patch, so I'm not quite there yet with understanding everything. Never-the-less it seems best to post my comments early, so as to help maintain concurrency between the review and getting the patch into shape. 

I've only been looking at partial-sort-basic-1.patch so far;

The patch no longer applies to master, but this was only due to a tab being replaced by 2 spaces in a pgident run. I've attached an updated patch which currently applies without any issues.

Here's a few notes from reading over the code:

* pathkeys.c

  EquivalenceMember *member = (EquivalenceMember *)
lfirst(list_head(key->pk_eclass->ec_members));

You can use linitial() instead of lfirst(list_head()). The same thing occurs in costsize.c

* pathkeys.c

The following fragment:

n = pathkeys_common(root->query_pathkeys, pathkeys);

if (n != 0)
{
/* It's useful ... or at least the first N keys are */
return n;
}

return 0; /* path ordering not useful */
}

Could just read:

/* return the number of path keys in common, or 0 if there are none */
return pathkeys_common(root->query_pathkeys, pathkeys);

* execnodes.h

In struct SortState, some new fields don't have a comment.


I've also thrown a few different workloads at the patch and I'm very impressed with most of the results. Especially when LIMIT is used, however I've found a regression case which I thought I should highlight, but for now I can't quite see what could be done to fix it.

create table a (x int not null, y int not null);
insert into a select x.x,y.y from generate_series(1,1000000) x(x) cross join generate_series(1,10) y(y);

Patched:
explain analyze select x,y from a where x+0=1 order by x,y limit 10;
                                                             QUERY PLAN
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Limit  (cost=92.42..163.21 rows=10 width=8) (actual time=6239.426..6239.429 rows=10 loops=1)
   ->  Partial sort  (cost=92.42..354064.37 rows=50000 width=8) (actual time=6239.406..6239.407 rows=10 loops=1)
         Sort Key: x, y
         Presorted Key: x
         Sort Method: quicksort  Memory: 25kB
         ->  Index Scan using a_x_idx on a  (cost=0.44..353939.13 rows=50000 width=8) (actual time=0.059..6239.319 rows=10 loops=1)
               Filter: ((x + 0) = 1)
               Rows Removed by Filter: 9999990
 Planning time: 0.212 ms
 Execution time: 6239.505 ms
(10 rows)


Time: 6241.220 ms

Unpatched:
explain analyze select x,y from a where x+0=1 order by x,y limit 10;
                                                     QUERY PLAN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Limit  (cost=195328.26..195328.28 rows=10 width=8) (actual time=3077.759..3077.761 rows=10 loops=1)
   ->  Sort  (cost=195328.26..195453.26 rows=50000 width=8) (actual time=3077.757..3077.757 rows=10 loops=1)
         Sort Key: x, y
         Sort Method: quicksort  Memory: 25kB
         ->  Seq Scan on a  (cost=0.00..194247.77 rows=50000 width=8) (actual time=0.018..3077.705 rows=10 loops=1)
               Filter: ((x + 0) = 1)
               Rows Removed by Filter: 9999990
 Planning time: 0.510 ms
 Execution time: 3077.837 ms
(9 rows)


Time: 3080.201 ms

As you can see, the patched version performs an index scan in order to get the partially sorted results, but it does end up quite a bit slower than the seqscan/sort that the unpatched master performs. I'm not quite sure how realistic the x+0 = 1 WHERE clause is, but perhaps the same would happen if something like x+y = 1 was performed too.... After a bit more analysis on this, I see that if I change the 50k estimate to 10 in the debugger that the num_groups is properly estimated at 1 and it then performs the seq scan instead. So it looks like the costings of the patch are not to blame here. (The 50k row estimate comes from rel tuples  / DEFAULT_NUM_DISTINCT)

That's all I have at the moment... More to follow soon.

Regards

David Rowley

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