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  1. Can we use Statistics Import and Export feature to perforamance testing?

    Ryohei Takahashi (Fujitsu) <r.takahashi_2@fujitsu.com> — 2025-04-08T00:20:58Z

    Hi,


I have a question about Statistics Import and Export.


* Background
I'm working for PGEcons[1], which is the PostgreSQL consortium in Japan.
Several companies participating in PGEcons have the following request for PostgreSQL.

They have two environments, production environment and staging environment.
Production environment has real customer's data and staging environment has dummy testing data.
When adding some application, they want to run the performance test on staging environment and
then apply to the production environment.
In the performance test, they want to use the same statistics as the production environment
to reduce the trouble in production environment.


* Question
By using Statistics Import and Export feature, is it possible to achieve the above request by following procedure?

(1) Export the statistics from production environment by using pg_dump --statistics-only.
(2) On the staging environment, set the autovacuum related parameters to prevent autovacuum from running.
(3) Import the statistics to staging environment by using the result of (1).


[1] PGECons is a non profit organization comprised of companies
in Japan to promote PostgreSQL (https://www.pgecons.org).


Regards,
Ryohei Takahashi

  2. Re: Can we use Statistics Import and Export feature to perforamance testing?

    David Rowley <dgrowleyml@gmail.com> — 2025-04-08T07:09:00Z

    On Tue, 8 Apr 2025 at 12:21, Ryohei Takahashi (Fujitsu)
<r.takahashi_2@fujitsu.com> wrote:
> By using Statistics Import and Export feature, is it possible to achieve the above request by following procedure?
> (1) Export the statistics from production environment by using pg_dump --statistics-only.
> (2) On the staging environment, set the autovacuum related parameters to prevent autovacuum from running.
> (3) Import the statistics to staging environment by using the result of (1).

You could certainly test the performance, but this method isn't
guaranteed to give meaningful results just because the table stats
match. One important thing to remember is that the planner also looks
at the *actual size* of the relation and takes that into account when
scaling the statistics (see table_block_relation_estimate_size() in
tableam.c). If the table sizes don't match between the two servers
then there's no guarantees the planner will produce the same plan.

Also, there might be other subtleties regarding OIDs of indexes which
are not guaranteed to be the same after dump/restore. Given some
fuzzily close enough cost estimates (See add_path() and
compare_path_costs_fuzzily()), it is possible a plan would switch to
using another index if sorting the indexes by their OIDs didn't match
on each server. The chances of that might be fairly small, but not
zero.

You'd also need to ensure the configs are the same in terms of GUCs
that are used for costs.

You could probably use get_relation_info_hook to overwrite the sizes
and make sure the indexes are in the same order, etc.

David

  3. RE: Can we use Statistics Import and Export feature to perforamance testing?

    Ryohei Takahashi (Fujitsu) <r.takahashi_2@fujitsu.com> — 2025-04-08T12:14:08Z

    Hi,


Thank you for your reply.
I understand that the access plans are not guaranteed to be the same.

Can we add these notes to the pg_dump page in the PostgreSQL Documentation
in order to prevent users from asking the same question?

Regards,
Ryohei Takahashi

  4. Re: Can we use Statistics Import and Export feature to perforamance testing?

    Corey Huinker <corey.huinker@gmail.com> — 2025-04-12T08:29:42Z

    >
> at the *actual size* of the relation and takes that into account when
> scaling the statistics (see table_block_relation_estimate_size() in
> tableam.c). If the table sizes don't match between the two servers
> then there's no guarantees the planner will produce the same plan.
>

Sorry that I didn't see this thread until now. I would like to note that
table_block_relation_estimate_size() determines the actual size of the
relation by asking pg_class, and the relevant values there are set by
pg_restore_relation_stats().

  5. Re: Can we use Statistics Import and Export feature to perforamance testing?

    Corey Huinker <corey.huinker@gmail.com> — 2025-04-12T08:43:20Z

    >
> * Question
>
> By using Statistics Import and Export feature, is it possible to achieve
> the above request by following procedure?
>
>
>
> (1) Export the statistics from production environment by using pg_dump
> --statistics-only.
>
> (2) On the staging environment, set the autovacuum related parameters to
> prevent autovacuum from running.
>
> (3) Import the statistics to staging environment by using the result of
> (1).
>

This was one of the initial intended uses for the statistical import
functions, specifically the pg_set_(relation|attribute)_stats variants.
Those variants have gone away, but the main functional difference was that
pg_restore_relation_stats() did inplace updates (it no longer does), and
without that difference set- variants became redundant.

So your procedure should still work so long as those statistics remain in
place, but just for explain plan generation of queries in isolation - there
is no way through statistics to make a large production query that
overflows work_mem do the same on a small test database, or other effects
that are a consequence of finding real data in the tables.

  6. Re: Can we use Statistics Import and Export feature to perforamance testing?

    David Rowley <dgrowleyml@gmail.com> — 2025-04-12T12:31:34Z

    On Sat, 12 Apr 2025 at 20:29, Corey Huinker <corey.huinker@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> at the *actual size* of the relation and takes that into account when
>> scaling the statistics (see table_block_relation_estimate_size() in
>> tableam.c). If the table sizes don't match between the two servers
>> then there's no guarantees the planner will produce the same plan.
>
> Sorry that I didn't see this thread until now. I would like to note that table_block_relation_estimate_size() determines the actual size of the relation by asking pg_class, and the relevant values there are set by pg_restore_relation_stats().

Sorry, this isn't correct. I suspect you're probably misreading the
code. On a fleeting glance, you might have seen the "relpages =
(BlockNumber) rel->rd_rel->relpages;" line and come to this
conclusion. A more careful study will reveal the truth. Check for
"curpages = RelationGetNumberOfBlocks(rel);" and an unconditional
"*pages = curpages;".

You might be getting confused because the code does look at the
pg_class fields, but that's only to estimate the tuple density. When
pg_class has those estimates, they're used to calculate the estimated
density by doing reltuples / relpages, but that average rows per page
is then applied to the *actual* number of pages in the relation. This
method allows the stats to be scaled as the table grows and that take
effect without waiting for vacuum or analyze to update the pg_class
fields. The planner checks the current size of the table every time it
plans a query. That's very well understood and documented. See [1].

David

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/row-estimation-examples.html#ROW-ESTIMATION-EXAMPLES

  7. Re: Can we use Statistics Import and Export feature to perforamance testing?

    Corey Huinker <corey.huinker@gmail.com> — 2025-04-12T18:44:34Z

    >
> You might be getting confused because the code does look at the
> pg_class fields, but that's only to estimate the tuple density. When
> pg_class has those estimates, they're used to calculate the estimated
> density by doing reltuples / relpages, but that average rows per page
>
>
Thanks for the clarification.

  8. Re: Can we use Statistics Import and Export feature to perforamance testing?

    Yugo Nagata <nagata@sraoss.co.jp> — 2025-10-23T10:27:53Z

    Hi,

On Tue, 8 Apr 2025 12:14:08 +0000
"Ryohei Takahashi (Fujitsu)" <r.takahashi_2@fujitsu.com> wrote:

> Thank you for your reply.
> I understand that the access plans are not guaranteed to be the same.
> 
> Can we add these notes to the pg_dump page in the PostgreSQL Documentation
> in order to prevent users from asking the same question?

I agree that it would be helpful to add this description, since the wording
“statistics manipulation functions” might give the impression that they can
influence generated plans.

I’ve attached a patch that adds a new paragraph to the warning section of the
documentation on statistics manipulation functions:

      Manually restored statistics do not guarantee that the same query plans
      will be generated as in the source environment, since factors such as
      relation sizes, index OIDs, and configuration parameters may affect
      planner behavior.

What do you think?

Regards,
Yugo Nagata

-- 
Yugo Nagata <nagata@sraoss.co.jp>

  9. RE: Can we use Statistics Import and Export feature to perforamance testing?

    Ryohei Takahashi (Fujitsu) <r.takahashi_2@fujitsu.com> — 2025-10-24T00:00:42Z

    Hi Nagata san,


Thank you.
Your patch is good for me.

I think this kind of documentation can prevent users confusing.

Regards,
Ryohei Takahashi

  10. Re: Can we use Statistics Import and Export feature to perforamance testing?

    Yugo Nagata <nagata@sraoss.co.jp> — 2025-10-24T03:16:39Z

    On Fri, 24 Oct 2025 00:00:42 +0000
"Ryohei Takahashi (Fujitsu)" <r.takahashi_2@fujitsu.com> wrote:

> Hi Nagata san,
> 
> 
> Thank you.
> Your patch is good for me.
> 
> I think this kind of documentation can prevent users confusing.

Thank you for your review.
I have registered this patch in the commitfest app.
https://commitfest.postgresql.org/patch/6155/

Regards,
Yugo Nagata

-- 
Yugo Nagata <nagata@sraoss.co.jp>

  11. Re: Can we use Statistics Import and Export feature to perforamance testing?

    vellaipandiyan sm <vellaipandiyan.sm@gmail.com> — 2026-05-27T05:54:06Z

    I prepared a small documentation follow-up patch adding a cross-reference to the planner statistics documentation section from the statistics manipulation warning.

The patch builds cleanly with:

`make -C doc/src/sgml html`

I will send the patch to the mailing list thread as well.