Horton

Re: Default setting for enable_hashagg_disk (hash_mem)

Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>

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From: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
To: Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie>
Cc: Justin Pryzby <pryzby@telsasoft.com>, Tomas Vondra <tomas.vondra@2ndquadrant.com>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>, David Rowley <dgrowleyml@gmail.com>, Jeff Davis <pgsql@j-davis.com>, Melanie Plageman <melanieplageman@gmail.com>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2020-07-03T14:08:08Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers, pgsql-docs 
On Thu, Jul  2, 2020 at 08:35:40PM -0700, Peter Geoghegan wrote:
> But the problem isn't really the hashaggs-that-spill patch itself.
> Rather, the problem is the way that work_mem is supposed to behave in
> general, and the impact that that has on hash aggregate now that it
> has finally been brought into line with every other kind of executor
> node. There just isn't much reason to think that we should give the
> same amount of memory to a groupagg + sort as a hash aggregate. The
> patch more or less broke an existing behavior that is itself
> officially broken. That is, the problem that we're trying to fix here
> is only a problem to the extent that the previous scheme isn't really
> operating as intended (because grouping estimates are inherently very
> hard). A revert doesn't seem like it helps anyone.
> 
> I accept that the idea of inventing hash_mem to fix this problem now
> is unorthodox. In a certain sense it solves problems beyond the
> problems that we're theoretically obligated to solve now. But any
> "more conservative" approach that I can think of seems like a big
> mess.

Well, the bottom line is that we are designing features during beta.
People are supposed to be testing PG 13 behavior during beta, including
optimizer behavior.  We don't even have a user report yet of a
regression compared to PG 12, or one that can't be fixed by increasing
work_mem.

If we add a new behavior to PG 13, we then have the pre-PG 13 behavior,
the pre-patch behavior, and the post-patch behavior.  How are people
supposed to test all of that?  Add to that that some don't even feel we
need a new behavior, which is delaying any patch from being applied.

-- 
  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.