db0d67db24
When evaluating a query with a multi-column GROUP BY clause using sort, the cost may be heavily dependent on the order in which the keys are compared when building the groups. Grouping does not imply any ordering, so we're allowed to compare the keys in arbitrary order, and a Hash Agg leverages this. But for Group Agg, we simply compared keys in the order as specified in the query. This commit explores alternative ordering of the keys, trying to find a cheaper one. In principle, we might generate grouping paths for all permutations of the keys, and leave the rest to the optimizer. But that might get very expensive, so we try to pick only a couple interesting orderings based on both local and global information. When planning the grouping path, we explore statistics (number of distinct values, cost of the comparison function) for the keys and reorder them to minimize comparison costs. Intuitively, it may be better to perform more expensive comparisons (for complex data types etc.) last, because maybe the cheaper comparisons will be enough. Similarly, the higher the cardinality of a key, the lower the probability we’ll need to compare more keys. The patch generates and costs various orderings, picking the cheapest ones. The ordering of group keys may interact with other parts of the query, some of which may not be known while planning the grouping. E.g. there may be an explicit ORDER BY clause, or some other ordering-dependent operation, higher up in the query, and using the same ordering may allow using either incremental sort or even eliminate the sort entirely. The patch generates orderings and picks those minimizing the comparison cost (for various pathkeys), and then adds orderings that might be useful for operations higher up in the plan (ORDER BY, etc.). Finally, it always keeps the ordering specified in the query, on the assumption the user might have additional insights. This introduces a new GUC enable_group_by_reordering, so that the optimization may be disabled if needed. The original patch was proposed by Teodor Sigaev, and later improved and reworked by Dmitry Dolgov. Reviews by a number of people, including me, Andrey Lepikhov, Claudio Freire, Ibrar Ahmed and Zhihong Yu. Author: Dmitry Dolgov, Teodor Sigaev, Tomas Vondra Reviewed-by: Tomas Vondra, Andrey Lepikhov, Claudio Freire, Ibrar Ahmed, Zhihong Yu Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/7c79e6a5-8597-74e8-0671-1c39d124c9d6%40sigaev.ru Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CA%2Bq6zcW_4o2NC0zutLkOJPsFt80megSpX_dVRo6GK9PC-Jx_Ag%40mail.gmail.com
PostgreSQL Database Management System ===================================== This directory contains the source code distribution of the PostgreSQL database management system. PostgreSQL is an advanced object-relational database management system that supports an extended subset of the SQL standard, including transactions, foreign keys, subqueries, triggers, user-defined types and functions. This distribution also contains C language bindings. PostgreSQL has many language interfaces, many of which are listed here: https://www.postgresql.org/download/ See the file INSTALL for instructions on how to build and install PostgreSQL. That file also lists supported operating systems and hardware platforms and contains information regarding any other software packages that are required to build or run the PostgreSQL system. Copyright and license information can be found in the file COPYRIGHT. A comprehensive documentation set is included in this distribution; it can be read as described in the installation instructions. The latest version of this software may be obtained at https://www.postgresql.org/download/. For more information look at our web site located at https://www.postgresql.org/.