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Re: pg_plan_advice

Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>

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From: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
To: "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>
Cc: PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2026-03-10T14:55:26Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers

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On Fri, Mar 6, 2026 at 9:47 AM David G. Johnston
<david.g.johnston@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thank you for putting in the time to respond.  That was quite helpful.  I've tweaked my tooling to help me remember to do this going forward.

Thanks. Here's v19. I've incorporated a bunch of your changes, some
that were fixes for clear errors and a few of the more stylistic cases
where I decided that I agreed with you, and I've also fixed some
similar things upon which you did not remark. Separately, I've also
committed the patches that were previously 0001, 0002, and 0005, so
all the preparatory stuff is done now, and this version just contains
the substantive commits, for which I am still in need of review,
especially for 0004. I have also made a minor code adjustment:
pg_plan_advice.trace_mask now prints the subplan name except for the
toplevel "subplan".

Here are a few comments on some of the changes you made that I did not adopt:

- In the README, "we" are the PostgreSQL developers and "the user" is
the person using the module. In the documentation, "you" is the user.
If there are deviations from this idea, we should fix them, but it
seems OK that the two documents have different rules, inasmuch as they
address different audiences.

- For the same reason, I chose not to copy the note about
enable_partitionwise_join=off into the README, as that is not a core
concept for developers but a likely error for users.  We also don't
really want to start duplicating content too much; arguably, we have
too much of that already.

- I don't really think we need to document the exact rules for
argument to, e.g., the pg_stash_advice functions. I think that makes
the documentation ponderous without adding any real utility. At most,
I would mention in some centralized place what the rules for stash
names are. Separately, there is the question of whether the current
naming rules are the right ones.

- In a lot of places, especially in the README, I just disagreed with
your choice of what to emphasize. For instance, I thought my longer
explanation of how we must not infer guidance from the absence of
advice was better than your shorter one, because it's such a critical
point for future developers touching this code to understand. On the
other hand, saying that advice should be stable in the face of
statistics changes was redundant: if it doesn't even do that much,
then what would even be the point?

- I chose to retain the use of the term "core planner" in the SGML
documentation rather than your suggestion of deleting the word "core".
I do not love the wording I've chosen here, but I don't love your
change, either. It seems to me that there is a risk of people being
confused about the distinction between the planning-related logic in
src/backend/optimizer and the planning-related object in
pg_plan_advice itself. I included the word in core for emphasis.
Whether this is the right idea is debatable, of course.

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.