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Re: pg_plan_advice

Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>

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From: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: Alexander Lakhin <exclusion@gmail.com>, Lukas Fittl <lukas@fittl.com>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2026-04-03T02:08:51Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers 
Thanks for the report.

On Thu, Apr 2, 2026 at 7:43 PM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> After looking around, I think the likely explanation is that the
> concurrently-run alter_table.sql test feels free to mess with the set
> of indexes on onek.  It doesn't drop onek_unique1, but it does
> momentarily rename it:
>
> ALTER INDEX onek_unique1 RENAME TO attmp_onek_unique1;
> ALTER INDEX attmp_onek_unique1 RENAME TO onek_unique1;

Yeah, the fact that it said /* inapplicable */ strongly supports this
theory. There's only two ways that can happen, and an index not
existing with the expected name is one of them (and the only one
that's possible in a query involving only a single table).

> I've not looked closely at pg_plan_advice, but if it matches indexes
> by name then it seems there's a window here where the advice would
> fail to apply.  Also, further down we find
>
> ALTER TABLE onek ADD CONSTRAINT onek_unique1_constraint UNIQUE (unique1);
> ALTER INDEX onek_unique1_constraint RENAME TO onek_unique1_constraint_foo;
> ALTER TABLE onek DROP CONSTRAINT onek_unique1_constraint_foo;
>
> which means there's a window there where there are two plausible
> indexes to choose.  Will test_plan_advice cope if the transient one
> is chosen?

It's going to be unhappy if the second planning cycle is incapable of
choosing the same index that the first planning cycle did. I have to
admit that it didn't occur to me that our regression tests would do
something like this. I figured they had to be operating on mostly
independent objects or things would already be broken, but I failed to
consider the possibility that there could be concurrent DDL of a sort
that wouldn't affect the normal running of the regression tests but
would affect pg_plan_advice. Or at least, if I did ever consider it, I
stopped considering it when test_plan_advice appeared to be passing.

> So I'm not sure what to do here, but we have a problem.

I'm not sure, either, and I agree that we have a problem. I'll give it
some more thought tomorrow.

-- 
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com

Commits

Same data as JSON: GET /api/v1/messages/:b64id/commits the thread's linked commits as JSON, with link sources. API reference →

  1. pg_plan_advice: Fix another unique-semijoin bug.

  2. pg_plan_advice: Export feedback-related definitions.

  3. pg_plan_advice: Fix a bug when a subquery is pruned away entirely.

  4. pg_plan_advice: Add alternatives test to Makefile.

  5. pg_plan_advice: Handle non-repeatable TABLESAMPLE scans.

  6. pg_stash_advice: Allow stashed advice to be persisted to disk.

  7. Add pg_stash_advice contrib module.

  8. pg_plan_advice: Avoid assertion failure with partitionwise aggregate.

  9. pg_plan_advice: Invent DO_NOT_SCAN(relation_identifier).

  10. Add an alternative_plan_name field to PlannerInfo.

  11. pg_plan_advice: Refactor to invent pgpa_planner_info

  12. Respect disabled_nodes in fix_alternative_subplan.

  13. get_memoize_path: Don't exit quickly when PGS_NESTLOOP_PLAIN is unset.

  14. test_plan_advice: Set TAP test priority 50 in meson.build.

  15. pg_plan_advice: Avoid a crash under GEQO.

  16. Test pg_plan_advice using a new test_plan_advice module.

  17. pg_plan_advice: Always install pg_plan_advice.h, and in the right place

  18. pg_plan_advice: Fix failures to accept identifier keywords.

  19. Add pg_plan_advice contrib module.

  20. Allow extensions to mark an individual index as disabled.

  21. Replace get_relation_info_hook with build_simple_rel_hook.

  22. Store information about Append node consolidation in the final plan.

  23. Store information about elided nodes in the final plan.

  24. Store information about range-table flattening in the final plan.

  25. Pass cursorOptions to planner_setup_hook.

  26. Fix PGS_CONSIDER_NONPARTIAL interaction with Materialize nodes.

  27. Fix mistakes in commit 4020b370f214315b8c10430301898ac21658143f

  28. Allow for plugin control over path generation strategies.

  29. Update some comments for fasthash

  30. Allow passing a pointer to GetNamedDSMSegment()'s init callback.

  31. Don't reset the pathlist of partitioned joinrels.

  32. Treat number of disabled nodes in a path as a separate cost metric.