The planner largely failed to consider the possibility that a
PlaceHolderVar's expression might contain a lateral reference to a Var
coming from somewhere outside the PHV's syntactic scope. We had a previous
report of a problem in this area, which I tried to fix in a quick-hack way
in commit 4da6439bd8, but Antonin Houska
pointed out that there were still some problems, and investigation turned
up other issues. This patch largely reverts that commit in favor of a more
thoroughly thought-through solution. The new theory is that a PHV's
ph_eval_at level cannot be higher than its original syntactic level. If it
contains lateral references, those don't change the ph_eval_at level, but
rather they create a lateral-reference requirement for the ph_eval_at join
relation. The code in joinpath.c needs to handle that.
Another issue is that createplan.c wasn't handling nested PlaceHolderVars
properly.
In passing, push knowledge of lateral-reference checks for join clauses
into join_clause_is_movable_to. This is mainly so that FDWs don't need
to deal with it.
This patch doesn't fix the original join-qual-placement problem reported by
Jeremy Evans (and indeed, one of the new regression test cases shows the
wrong answer because of that). But the PlaceHolderVar problems need to be
fixed before that issue can be addressed, so committing this separately
seems reasonable.
It's possible to drop a column from an input table of a JOIN clause in a
view, if that column is nowhere actually referenced in the view. But it
will still be there in the JOIN clause's joinaliasvars list. We used to
replace such entries with NULL Const nodes, which is handy for generation
of RowExpr expansion of a whole-row reference to the view. The trouble
with that is that it can't be distinguished from the situation after
subquery pull-up of a constant subquery output expression below the JOIN.
Instead, replace such joinaliasvars with null pointers (empty expression
trees), which can't be confused with pulled-up expressions. expandRTE()
still emits the old convention, though, for convenience of RowExpr
generation and to reduce the risk of breaking extension code.
In HEAD and 9.3, this patch also fixes a problem with some new code in
ruleutils.c that was failing to cope with implicitly-casted joinaliasvars
entries, as per recent report from Feike Steenbergen. That oversight was
because of an inadequate description of the data structure in parsenodes.h,
which I've now corrected. There were some pre-existing oversights of the
same ilk elsewhere, which I believe are now all fixed.
This patch takes care of a number of problems having to do with failure
to choose valid join orders and incorrect handling of lateral references
pulled up from subqueries. Notable changes:
* Add a LateralJoinInfo data structure similar to SpecialJoinInfo, to
represent join ordering constraints created by lateral references.
(I first considered extending the SpecialJoinInfo structure, but the
semantics are different enough that a separate data structure seems
better.) Extend join_is_legal() and related functions to prevent trying
to form unworkable joins, and to ensure that we will consider joins that
satisfy lateral references even if the joins would be clauseless.
* Fill in the infrastructure needed for the last few types of relation scan
paths to support parameterization. We'd have wanted this eventually
anyway, but it is necessary now because a relation that gets pulled up out
of a UNION ALL subquery may acquire a reltargetlist containing lateral
references, meaning that its paths *have* to be parameterized whether or
not we have any code that can push join quals down into the scan.
* Compute data about lateral references early in query_planner(), and save
in RelOptInfo nodes, to avoid repetitive calculations later.
* Assorted corner-case bug fixes.
There's probably still some bugs left, but this is a lot closer to being
real than it was before.
Formerly, subquery pullup had no need to examine other entries in the range
table, since they could not contain any references to the subquery being
pulled up. That's no longer true with LATERAL, so now we need to be able
to visit rangetable subexpressions to replace Vars referencing the
pulled-up subquery. Also, this means that extract_lateral_references must
be unsurprised at encountering lateral PlaceHolderVars, since such might be
created when pulling up a subquery that's underneath an outer join with
respect to the lateral reference.
Formerly we relied on checking after-the-fact to see if an expression
contained aggregates, window functions, or sub-selects when it shouldn't.
This is grotty, easily forgotten (indeed, we had forgotten to teach
DefineIndex about rejecting window functions), and none too efficient
since it requires extra traversals of the parse tree. To improve matters,
define an enum type that classifies all SQL sub-expressions, store it in
ParseState to show what kind of expression we are currently parsing, and
make transformAggregateCall, transformWindowFuncCall, and transformSubLink
check the expression type and throw error if the type indicates the
construct is disallowed. This allows removal of a large number of ad-hoc
checks scattered around the code base. The enum type is sufficiently
fine-grained that we can still produce error messages of at least the
same specificity as before.
Bringing these error checks together revealed that we'd been none too
consistent about phrasing of the error messages, so standardize the wording
a bit.
Also, rewrite checking of aggregate arguments so that it requires only one
traversal of the arguments, rather than up to three as before.
In passing, clean up some more comments left over from add_missing_from
support, and annotate some tests that I think are dead code now that that's
gone. (I didn't risk actually removing said dead code, though.)
This patch implements the standard syntax of LATERAL attached to a
sub-SELECT in FROM, and also allows LATERAL attached to a function in FROM,
since set-returning function calls are expected to be one of the principal
use-cases.
The main change here is a rewrite of the mechanism for keeping track of
which relations are visible for column references while the FROM clause is
being scanned. The parser "namespace" lists are no longer lists of bare
RTEs, but are lists of ParseNamespaceItem structs, which carry an RTE
pointer as well as some visibility-controlling flags. Aside from
supporting LATERAL correctly, this lets us get rid of the ancient hacks
that required rechecking subqueries and JOIN/ON and function-in-FROM
expressions for invalid references after they were initially parsed.
Invalid column references are now always correctly detected on sight.
In passing, remove assorted parser error checks that are now dead code by
virtue of our having gotten rid of add_missing_from, as well as some
comments that are obsolete for the same reason. (It was mainly
add_missing_from that caused so much fudging here in the first place.)
The planner support for this feature is very minimal, and will be improved
in future patches. It works well enough for testing purposes, though.
catversion bump forced due to new field in RangeTblEntry.
The hstore and json datatypes both have record-conversion functions that
pay attention to column names in the composite values they're handed.
We used to not worry about inserting correct field names into tuple
descriptors generated at runtime, but given these examples it seems
useful to do so. Observe the nicer-looking results in the regression
tests whose results changed.
catversion bump because there is a subtle change in requirements for stored
rule parsetrees: RowExprs from ROW() constructs now have to include field
names.
Andrew Dunstan and Tom Lane
This allows us to give correct syntax error pointers when complaining
about ungrouped variables in a join query with aggregates or GROUP BY.
It's pretty much irrelevant for the planner's use of the function, though
perhaps it might aid debugging sometimes.
When a btree index contains all columns required by the query, and the
visibility map shows that all tuples on a target heap page are
visible-to-all, we don't need to fetch that heap page. This patch depends
on the previous patches that made the visibility map reliable.
There's a fair amount left to do here, notably trying to figure out a less
chintzy way of estimating the cost of an index-only scan, but the core
functionality seems ready to commit.
Robert Haas and Ibrar Ahmed, with some previous work by Heikki Linnakangas.
Regular aggregate functions in combination with, or within the arguments
of, window functions are OK per spec; they have the semantics that the
aggregate output rows are computed and then we run the window functions
over that row set. (Thus, this combination is not really useful unless
there's a GROUP BY so that more than one aggregate output row is possible.)
The case without GROUP BY could fail, as recently reported by Jeff Davis,
because sloppy construction of the Agg node's targetlist resulted in extra
references to possibly-ungrouped Vars appearing outside the aggregate
function calls themselves. See the added regression test case for an
example.
Fixing this requires modifying the API of flatten_tlist and its underlying
function pull_var_clause. I chose to make pull_var_clause's API for
aggregates identical to what it was already doing for placeholders, since
the useful behaviors turn out to be the same (error, report node as-is, or
recurse into it). I also tightened the error checking in this area a bit:
if it was ever valid to see an uplevel Var, Aggref, or PlaceHolderVar here,
that was a long time ago, so complain instead of ignoring them.
Backpatch into 9.1. The failure exists in 8.4 and 9.0 as well, but seeing
that it only occurs in a basically-useless corner case, it doesn't seem
worth the risks of changing a function API in a minor release. There might
be third-party code using pull_var_clause.
Per my recent proposal, get rid of all the direct inspection of indexes
and manual generation of paths in planagg.c. Instead, set up
EquivalenceClasses for the aggregate argument expressions, and let the
regular path generation logic deal with creating paths that can satisfy
those sort orders. This makes planagg.c a bit more visible to the rest
of the planner than it was originally, but the approach is basically a lot
cleaner than before. A major advantage of doing it this way is that we get
MIN/MAX optimization on inheritance trees (using MergeAppend of indexscans)
practically for free, whereas in the old way we'd have had to add a whole
lot more duplicative logic.
One small disadvantage of this approach is that MIN/MAX aggregates can no
longer exploit partial indexes having an "x IS NOT NULL" predicate, unless
that restriction or something that implies it is specified in the query.
The previous implementation was able to use the added "x IS NOT NULL"
condition as an extra predicate proof condition, but in this version we
rely entirely on indexes that are considered usable by the main planning
process. That seems a fair tradeoff for the simplicity and functionality
gained.
sub-select contains a join alias reference that expands into an expression
containing another sub-select. Per yesterday's report from Merlin Moncure
and subsequent off-list investigation.
Back-patch to 7.4. Older versions didn't attempt to flatten sub-selects in
ways that would trigger this problem.
Stefan Kaltenbrunner. The most reasonable behavior (at least for the near
term) seems to be to ignore the PlaceHolderVar and examine its argument
instead. In support of this, change the API of pull_var_clause() to allow
callers to request recursion into PlaceHolderVars. Currently
estimate_num_groups() is the only customer for that behavior, but where
there's one there may be others.
making pull_up_sublinks() construct a full-blown JoinExpr tree representation
of IN/EXISTS SubLinks that it is able to convert to semi or anti joins.
This makes pull_up_sublinks() a shade more complex, but the gain in semantic
clarity is worth it. I still have more to do in this area to address the
previously-discussed problems, but this commit in itself fixes at least one
bug in HEAD, as shown by added regression test case.
until vars are distributed to rels during query_planner() startup. We don't
really need it before that, and not building it early has some advantages.
First, we don't need to put it through the various preprocessing steps, which
saves some cycles and eliminates the need for a number of routines to support
PlaceHolderInfo nodes at all. Second, this means one less unused plan for any
sub-SELECT appearing in a placeholder's expression, since we don't build
placeholder_list until after sublink expansion is complete.
that represent some expression that we desire to compute below the top level
of the plan, and then let that value "bubble up" as though it were a plain
Var (ie, a column value).
The immediate application is to allow sub-selects to be flattened even when
they are below an outer join and have non-nullable output expressions.
Formerly we couldn't flatten because such an expression wouldn't properly
go to NULL when evaluated above the outer join. Now, we wrap it in a
PlaceHolderVar and arrange for the actual evaluation to occur below the outer
join. When the resulting Var bubbles up through the join, it will be set to
NULL if necessary, yielding the correct results. This fixes a planner
limitation that's existed since 7.1.
In future we might want to use this mechanism to re-introduce some form of
Hellerstein's "expensive functions" optimization, ie place the evaluation of
an expensive function at the most suitable point in the plan tree.
the column alias names of the RTE referenced by the Var to the RowExpr.
This is needed to allow ruleutils.c to correctly deparse FieldSelect nodes
referencing such a construct. Per my recent bug report.
Adding a field to RowExpr forces initdb (because of stored rules changes)
so this solution is not back-patchable; which is unfortunate because 8.2
and 8.3 have this issue. But it only affects EXPLAIN for some pretty odd
corner cases, so we can probably live without a solution for the back
branches.
most node types used in expression trees (both before and after parse
analysis). This allows us to place an error cursor in many situations
where we formerly could not, because the information wasn't available
beyond the very first level of parse analysis. There's a fair amount
of work still to be done to persuade individual ereport() calls to actually
include an error location, but this gets the initdb-forcing part of the
work out of the way; and the situation is already markedly better than
before for complaints about unimplementable implicit casts, such as
CASE and UNION constructs with incompatible alternative data types.
Per my proposal of a few days ago.
into nodes/nodeFuncs, so as to reduce wanton cross-subsystem #includes inside
the backend. There's probably more that should be done along this line,
but this is a start anyway.
subqueries into the same thing you'd have gotten from IN (except always with
unknownEqFalse = true, so as to get the proper semantics for an EXISTS).
I believe this fixes the last case within CVS HEAD in which an EXISTS could
give worse performance than an equivalent IN subquery.
The tricky part of this is that if the upper query probes the EXISTS for only
a few rows, the hashing implementation can actually be worse than the default,
and therefore we need to make a cost-based decision about which way to use.
But at the time when the planner generates plans for subqueries, it doesn't
really know how many times the subquery will be executed. The least invasive
solution seems to be to generate both plans and postpone the choice until
execution. Therefore, in a query that has been optimized this way, EXPLAIN
will show two subplans for the EXISTS, of which only one will actually get
executed.
There is a lot more that could be done based on this infrastructure: in
particular it's interesting to consider switching to the hash plan if we start
out using the non-hashed plan but find a lot more upper rows going by than we
expected. I have therefore left some minor inefficiencies in place, such as
initializing both subplans even though we will currently only use one.
the old JOIN_IN code, but antijoins are new functionality.) Teach the planner
to convert appropriate EXISTS and NOT EXISTS subqueries into semi and anti
joins respectively. Also, LEFT JOINs with suitable upper-level IS NULL
filters are recognized as being anti joins. Unify the InClauseInfo and
OuterJoinInfo infrastructure into "SpecialJoinInfo". With that change,
it becomes possible to associate a SpecialJoinInfo with every join attempt,
which permits some cleanup of join selectivity estimation. That needs to be
taken much further than this patch does, but the next step is to change the
API for oprjoin selectivity functions, which seems like material for a
separate patch. So for the moment the output size estimates for semi and
especially anti joins are quite bogus.
unnecessary #include lines in it. Also, move some tuple routine prototypes and
macros to htup.h, which allows removal of heapam.h inclusion from some .c
files.
For this to work, a new header file access/sysattr.h needed to be created,
initially containing attribute numbers of system columns, for pg_dump usage.
While at it, make contrib ltree, intarray and hstore header files more
consistent with our header style.
columns, and the new version can be stored on the same heap page, we no longer
generate extra index entries for the new version. Instead, index searches
follow the HOT-chain links to ensure they find the correct tuple version.
In addition, this patch introduces the ability to "prune" dead tuples on a
per-page basis, without having to do a complete VACUUM pass to recover space.
VACUUM is still needed to clean up dead index entries, however.
Pavan Deolasee, with help from a bunch of other people.
Along the way, allow FOR UPDATE in non-WITH-HOLD cursors; there may once
have been a reason to disallow that, but it seems to work now, and it's
really rather necessary if you want to select a row via a cursor and then
update it in a concurrent-safe fashion.
Original patch by Arul Shaji, rather heavily editorialized by Tom Lane.
a new PlannerInfo struct, which is passed around instead of the bare
Query in all the planning code. This commit is essentially just a
code-beautification exercise, but it does open the door to making
larger changes to the planner data structures without having to muck
with the widely-known Query struct.
performance problem pointed out by phil@vodafone: to wit, we were
spending O(N^2) time to check dropped-ness in an N-deep join tree,
even in the case where the tree was freshly constructed and couldn't
possibly mention any dropped columns. Instead of recursing in
get_rte_attribute_is_dropped(), change the data structure definition:
the joinaliasvars list of a JOIN RTE must have a NULL Const instead
of a Var at any position that references a now-dropped column. This
costs nothing during normal parse-rewrite-plan path, and instead we
have a linear-time update to make when loading a stored rule that
might contain now-dropped columns. While at it, move the responsibility
for acquring locks on relations referenced by rules into this separate
function (which I therefore chose to call AcquireRewriteLocks).
This saves effort --- namely, duplicated lock grabs in parser and rewriter
--- in the normal path at a cost of one extra non-locked heap_open()
in the stored-rule path; seems a good tradeoff. A fringe benefit is
that it is now *much* clearer that we acquire lock on relations referenced
in rules before we make any rewriter decisions based on their properties.
(I don't know of any bug of that ilk, but it wasn't exactly clear before.)
presence of dropped columns. Document the already-presumed fact that
eref aliases in relation RTEs are supposed to have entries for dropped
columns; cause the user alias structs to have such entries too, so that
there's always a one-to-one mapping to the underlying physical attnums.
Adjust expandRTE() and related code to handle the case where a column
that is part of a JOIN has been dropped. Generalize expandRTE()'s API
so that it can be used in a couple of places that formerly rolled their
own implementation of the same logic. Fix ruleutils.c to suppress
display of aliases for columns that were dropped since the rule was made.
In the past, we used a 'Lispy' linked list implementation: a "list" was
merely a pointer to the head node of the list. The problem with that
design is that it makes lappend() and length() linear time. This patch
fixes that problem (and others) by maintaining a count of the list
length and a pointer to the tail node along with each head node pointer.
A "list" is now a pointer to a structure containing some meta-data
about the list; the head and tail pointers in that structure refer
to ListCell structures that maintain the actual linked list of nodes.
The function names of the list API have also been changed to, I hope,
be more logically consistent. By default, the old function names are
still available; they will be disabled-by-default once the rest of
the tree has been updated to use the new API names.
Tom Lane