Re: Performance regressions in PG 9.3 vs PG 9.0 - Mailing list pgsql-performance

From uher dslij
Subject Re: Performance regressions in PG 9.3 vs PG 9.0
Date
Msg-id CAKGDDeuX1uzQgR-g5cYzJsnj9nfrd=F7=PXq4yyF=tANKmTYXw@mail.gmail.com
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In response to Re: Performance regressions in PG 9.3 vs PG 9.0  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
Responses Re: Performance regressions in PG 9.3 vs PG 9.0
List pgsql-performance
Sorry for the premature send on that last email.  Here is the full one:

Thanks for your reply Tom.  I've found that the culprit is the function parentContainers(), which recurses up a folder structure and looks like this:

create function parentContainers(numeric) returns setof numeric
as '
    select parentContainers( (select container_id from container where id = $1 ) )
union
    select id from container where id = $1
' language sql stable returns null on null input;

It is declared stable, but I know that STABLE is just planner hint, so it doesn't guarantee that it will only get called once.  If I replace the function call with the two values this function returns, I get < 1 ms runtime on all versions of pg.  So there is data to support the statement that we were relying on planner luck before and that luck has run out.

What is the best practice to ensure a stable function only gets called once?  Should I use a CTE to cache the result?  Is there a better way?

Thanks in advance,


On Tue, Apr 8, 2014 at 5:26 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
uher dslij <codon3@gmail.com> writes:
> The EXPLAINs all pretty much look like my original post.  The planner in
> 9.2 and above is simply not using bitmap heap scans or bitmap index scans?
>  What could be the reason for this?

I don't see any reason to think this is a planner regression.  The
rowcount estimates are pretty far off in both versions; so it's just a
matter of luck that 9.0 is choosing a better join order than 9.3.

I'd try cranking up the statistics targets for the join columns
(particularly domain_id) and see if that leads to better estimates.

                        regards, tom lane

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