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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>, Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>, Melanie Plageman <melanieplageman@gmail.com>, "heikki.linnakangas" <heikki.linnakangas@iki.fi>
Date: 2026-04-07T21:21:19Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers

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On Fri, Apr 3, 2026 at 11:14 PM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> I believe that we probably will need to do something in this
> area before v19 release.  If we're willing to commit to it being
> "run the tests serially", then sure we can wait awhile before
> actually doing that.  Maybe we'll even think of a better idea
> ... but what we can do about this post-freeze seems pretty
> constrained to me.

Here's a new patch set. All of these patches are new, but I'm
continuing to increment the same version number sequence.

0001 and 0002 implement the "retry a few times" idea for avoiding
test_plan_advice failures. I argue that (a) these are reasonable
post-commit stabilization that should not be blocked by feature freeze
and (b) most people here will be happier with a solution like this
that will normally cost very little than they will be with switching
test_plan_advice to executing serially. The RMT can decide whether it
agrees. The other question here is whether it's really a good idea to
apply this now considering that we've seen only one failure so far. I
think it's probably a good idea to do something like this before
release, so that we hopefully reduce the false positive rate from the
test to something much closer to zero, but I think we've still had
only the one failure, and I'm really interested in knowing how close
the failure rate is to zero already. The RMT may have an opinion on
how long to wait before doing something like this, too.

0003 fixes the problem with tablesample scans that Alexander Lakhin
reported. The bug occurs when a tablesample handler does not set
repeatable_across_scans and the resulting Sample Scan appears below a
join. The test case provided by Alexander shows the Sample Scan on the
inner side of the join, but it's also possible to construct a case
where it occurs on the outer side of the join. This commit adds tests
for both cases.

0004 fixes an oversight in commit
6455e55b0da47255f332a96f005ba0dd1c7176c2, which failed to add a new
pg_regress test to the pg_plan_advice Makefile.

0005 fixes the other issue that Alexander Lakhin recently reported,
which manifested as ERROR:  no rtoffset for plan unnamed_subquery when
trying to generate advice. That turns out to occur when a subquery is
proven empty and that subquery contains a semijoin that could have
been implemented by making one side unique. I chose a different fix
than what I mentioned in my response to Alexander's email. There was
already code that handles the case where a SubPlanRTInfo exists and is
marked dummy, and this fix extends that handling to the case where no
SubPlanRTInfo exists at all, which seems better than treating those
two cases in separate parts of the code.

I don't think that anyone will argue that 0003-0005 are things we
can't or shouldn't fix after feature freeze, and I plan to apply those
fixes shortly after feature freeze, unless there are objections or
better ideas. I could rush them in before that, too, but I don't think
what the tree needs are more people trying to commit all at once right
now.

Thanks,

-- 
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.