Plan weirdness. A sort produces more rows than the node beneath it

Dane Foster <studdugie@gmail.com>

From: Dane Foster <studdugie@gmail.com>
To: psql-performance <pgsql-performance@postgresql.org>
Date: 2023-08-04T14:59:19Z
Lists: pgsql-performance
Hello,

I'm trying to understand a bit of weirdness in a plan output. There is a
sort node above a sequential scan node where the scan node produces 26,026
rows yet the sort node above it produces 42,995,408. How is it possible to
sort more data than you received?

https://explain.dalibo.com/plan/1ee665h69f92chc5

The PostgreSQL version is 14.2 running on Amazon's RDS. Thanks.


Dane