From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>
cc: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: 7k records into Sort node, 4.5m out?
In-reply-to: <502C3DE2.9060703@agliodbs.com>
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	<dda48e8e4cd63cc6f98f9eca78016c05.squirrel@sq.gransy.com>
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	<10304.1344910305@sss.pgh.pa.us>
	<623F2FF3-B79D-419A-929A-41C707DD5EA3@thebuild.com>
	<16268.1345063872@sss.pgh.pa.us> <502C0E6B.1040402@agliodbs.com>
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Comments: In-reply-to Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>
	message dated "Wed, 15 Aug 2012 17:25:06 -0700"
Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2012 02:01:51 -0400
Message-ID: <2703.1345096911@sss.pgh.pa.us>

Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:
> SELECT COUNT(*)
> FROM "user"
> INNER JOIN "house"
>       ON ("user"."house_id" = "house"."id")
> LEFT OUTER JOIN "district"
>       ON ("house"."district_id" = "district"."id")
> WHERE ("user"."status" = 0
>      AND ("district"."update_status" = 2
>                 OR "district"."update_status" = 3 )
>      AND ("user"."valid" = 1
>                 OR "user"."valid" = 3 )
>      AND "district"."is_test" = false );

> However, since the anonymization above doesn't quite match that used in
> the EXPLAIN plan, I'm not sure what you'll get out of it.  And yes, we
> know that the outer join is being invalidated.

Ah, I see where I was confused: in the original query plan I'd been
imagining that charlie.sierra was a unique column, but your gloss on
that as being house.district_id implies that it's highly non-unique.
And looking at the rowcounts in the original plan backs that up:
there are about 600 house rows per district row.  So my thought of
having district as the outer side of a nestloop scanning the index
on house.district_id would not really work very well --- maybe it
would end up cheaper than the mergejoin plan, but it's far from a
clear-cut win.

On the whole I'm thinking the code is operating as designed here.

			regards, tom lane