On Tue, 2003-05-06 at 00:45, Tom Lane wrote:
> Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:
> > The reason that I mention EXISTS is because that's where the lack of 
> > cross-column corellation is most dramatic; the planner seems to estimate a 
> > flat 50% for EXISTS clauses regardless of the content.
> 
> No "seems to" about that one: see src/backend/optimizer/path/clausesel.c
> 
>     else if (is_subplan(clause))
>     {
>         /*
>          * Just for the moment! FIX ME! - vadim 02/04/98
>          */
>         s1 = (Selectivity) 0.5;
>     }
> 
> Patches to improve this are welcome ;-).  But I'm not at all sure how to
> write something that would extract a reliable selectivity estimate from
> a subplan.
> 
given that we have so few GUC variables... 
would there be any merit in adding one that would allow folks to change
this assumption? 
Robert Treat