Re: Default setting for enable_hashagg_disk

Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>

From: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
To: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Cc: David Rowley <dgrowleyml@gmail.com>, Jeff Davis <pgsql@j-davis.com>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, Justin Pryzby <pryzby@telsasoft.com>, Melanie Plageman <melanieplageman@gmail.com>, Tomas Vondra <tomas.vondra@2ndquadrant.com>, "pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2020-06-24T23:18:10Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers, pgsql-docs
On Wed, Jun 24, 2020 at 12:19:00PM -0700, Andres Freund wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 2020-06-24 13:12:03 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > Well, my point is that merge join works that way, and no one has needed
> > a knob to avoid mergejoin if it is going to spill to disk.  If they are
> > adjusting work_mem to prevent spill of merge join, they can do the same
> > for hash agg.  We just need to document this in the release notes.
> 
> I don't think this is comparable. For starters, the IO indirectly
> triggered by mergejoin actually leads to plenty people just straight out
> disabling it. For lots of workloads there's never a valid reason to use
> a mergejoin (and often the planner will never choose one). Secondly, the
> planner has better information about estimating the memory usage for the
> to-be-sorted data than it has about the size of the transition
> values. And lastly, there's a difference between a long existing cause
> for bad IO behaviour and one that's suddenly kicks in after a major
> version upgrade, to which there's no escape hatch (it's rarely realistic
> to disable hash aggs, in contrast to merge joins).

Well, this sounds like an issue of degree, rather than kind.  It sure
sounds like "ignore work_mem for this join type, but not the other".

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        https://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                             https://enterprisedb.com

  The usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness, Bruce Lee




Commits

  1. Add hash_mem_multiplier GUC.

  2. HashAgg: use better cardinality estimate for recursive spilling.

  3. Remove hashagg_avoid_disk_plan GUC.

  4. Doc fixup for hashagg_avoid_disk_plan GUC.

  5. Rework HashAgg GUCs.

  6. Disk-based Hash Aggregation.

  7. Implement partition-wise grouping/aggregation.

  8. Defer creation of partially-grouped relation until it's needed.