Thread: Should the optimizer optimize "current_date - interval '1 days'" (fwd)

On a very big table (a data warehouse with >10 million rows), I frequently
run queries looking at the past few days.

However queries like this:
   select count(*)
     from fact
    where dat > (current_date - interval '1 days');
never uses the index I have on "fact".  (Thanks to previous queries it's now
ordered by 'dat' so the correlation in pg_stats is '1'.).

However if I toss on an extra where clause with a constant like
   select count(*)
     from fact
    where dat > (current_date - interval '1 days')
      and dat > '2002-05-20';
it hapily uses the index (at least for the second comparison).


Should it treat my current_dat... expression as a constant and use
the index?  Or is there a good reason it doesn't?

    Thanks,
    Ron


PS: This seems true even if I "set enable_seqscan to off".

logs2=# set enable_seqscan to off;
logs2=# explain
logs2-#   select count(*) from fact
logs2-#   where dat > (current_date - interval '1 days');
NOTICE:  QUERY PLAN:

Aggregate  (cost=101265332.77..101265332.77 rows=1 width=0)
  ->  Seq Scan on fact  (cost=100000000.00..101231544.46 rows=13515325 width=0)


logs2=# explain
logs2-#   select count(*)
logs2-#      from fact
logs2-#     where dat > (current_date - interval '1 days')
logs2-#       and dat > '2002-05-20';
NOTICE:  QUERY PLAN:

Aggregate  (cost=198729.54..198729.54 rows=1 width=0)
  ->  Index Scan using i__fact__dat on fact  (cost=0.00..194279.24
rows=1780119 width=0)

EXPLAIN
logs2=#

Ron Mayer <ron@intervideo.com> writes:
>     where dat > (current_date - interval '1 days');
> never uses the index I have on "fact".

I suppose dat is of type date?

> Should it treat my current_dat... expression as a constant and use
> the index?  Or is there a good reason it doesn't?

You will never get an indexscan out of that because the expression
seen by the planner is

    where timestamp(dat) > timestamp-expression

which is not compatible with an index of datatype date.  You should
write something that yields a date, not a timestamp, for example

    where dat > (current_date - 1)

This should be indexable (and is, in current development sources)
but in 7.2 and before you have to do additional pushups because
the planner doesn't understand that current_date can be treated
as a constant for the duration of a single indexscan.  The standard
workaround is to create a function of a signature like
"days_ago(int) returns date" and mark it isCachable.  This is a cheat
but it works fine in interactive queries.  See past discussions in
the archives.

            regards, tom lane