Re: Default setting for enable_hashagg_disk - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

On Thu, 2020-04-09 at 12:24 -0500, Justin Pryzby wrote:
> Also.. there's no such thing as enable_groupagg?  Unless I've been
> missing out
> on something.

I thought about adding that, and went so far as to make a patch. But it
didn't seem right to me -- the grouping isn't what takes the time, it's
the sorting. So what would the point of such a GUC be? To disable
GroupAgg when the input data is already sorted? Or a strange way to
disable Sort?

> Because HashAgg plans which used to run fine (because they weren't
> prevented
> from overflowing work_mem) might now run poorly after spilling to
> disk (because
> of overflowing work_mem).

It's probably worth a mention in the release notes, but I wouldn't word
it too strongly. Typically the performance difference is not a lot if
the workload still fits in system memory.

Regards,
    Jeff Davis