Thread: Do Views offer any performance advantage?

Hi all,

Whilst I often use views for convenience, is there any performance
advantage at all in using a view rather than running the same query
directly on the tables themselves?

Is it quicker to run a full complex query rather than run a much simpler
query on a view? (Hope that makes sense)


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"Robert John Shepherd" <robert@reviewer.co.uk> writes:
> Whilst I often use views for convenience, is there any performance
> advantage at all in using a view rather than running the same query
> directly on the tables themselves?

No, a view is just a macro.

There is probably some minuscule cost difference involved --- you save
parsing and parse analysis of a long query string.  On the other hand,
you pay to pull the view definition from the catalogs and merge it into
the given query.  I'd not care to hazard a guess on whether the actual
net cost is more or less; but in any case these costs will be swamped
by query planning and execution, if the query is complex.

If you're concerned about reducing parse/plan overhead for repetitive
queries, the prepared-statement facility (new in 7.3) is what to look
at.  Views won't do much for you.

            regards, tom lane

Tom Lane wrote:

>
>There is probably some minuscule cost difference involved --- you save
>parsing and parse analysis of a long query string.  On the other hand,
>you pay to pull the view definition from the catalogs and merge it into
>the given query.  I'd not care to hazard a guess on whether the actual
>net cost is more or less; but in any case these costs will be swamped
>by query planning and execution, if the query is complex.
>
Actually, there are cases when a view can impact performance.
If you are joining a view, it seems to be treated as a subquery, that
might have a much larger result than you would like.

Imagine
SELECT something
  FROM A JOIN B JOIN C ...
 WHERE A.primaryKeyFoo=1234 ...

 where C is a view, containing JOINs itself, I observed a query plan
(7.3.2) like
A JOIN B JOIN (D JOIN E)
instead of
A JOIN B JOIN D JOIN E which would be much more efficient for the
A.primaryKeyFoo restriction.

Andreas Pflug <Andreas.Pflug@web.de> writes:
> Actually, there are cases when a view can impact performance.
> If you are joining a view, it seems to be treated as a subquery, that
> might have a much larger result than you would like.

> Imagine
> SELECT something
>   FROM A JOIN B JOIN C ...
>  WHERE A.primaryKeyFoo=1234 ...

>  where C is a view, containing JOINs itself, I observed a query plan
> (7.3.2) like
> A JOIN B JOIN (D JOIN E)
> instead of
> A JOIN B JOIN D JOIN E which would be much more efficient for the
> A.primaryKeyFoo restriction.

This is not the view's fault though --- the same would have happened
if you'd written explicitly

    FROM A JOIN B JOIN (D JOIN E)

7.4 will be less rigid about this (with or without a view ...)

            regards, tom lane

Tom Lane wrote:

>This is not the view's fault though --- the same would have happened
>if you'd written explicitly
>
>    FROM A JOIN B JOIN (D JOIN E)
>
That's right, I just wanted to warn about accessive use of joins with
views. I noticed this in an application, where quite big views where
joined for convenience, and the result wasn't satisfying.

>
>7.4 will be less rigid about this (with or without a view ...)
>
Good!
Regards,
Andreas