Re: Window Functions with identical PARTITION BY and ORDER BY clauses evaluated separately

Christopher Inokuchi <cinokuchi@gmail.com>

From: Christopher Inokuchi <cinokuchi@gmail.com>
To: Greg Sabino Mullane <htamfids@gmail.com>
Cc: pgsql-bugs@lists.postgresql.org
Date: 2025-03-07T20:53:03Z
Lists: pgsql-bugs
Was it really not intentional that the docs explicitly name PARTITION BY
and ORDER BY rather than the entire window_definition? If I understand
correctly, only those two clauses control which records are hit and in what
order.

Sorry for the impudence, but I was rather excited for the potential
performance gain when I saw the doc excerpt. I appreciate the time taken to
respond to my query.

Thank you,
Christopher Inokuchi

On Fri, Mar 7, 2025 at 6:24 AM Greg Sabino Mullane <htamfids@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Those are different windows. See:
>
>
> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-expressions.html#SYNTAX-WINDOW-FUNCTIONS
>
> Because the (optional) frame_clause is part of the window_definition, it
> does seem like a minor documentation bug as we ought to mention that the
> frame (if it exists) needs to be equivalent too. Here's a better link to
> where we state that:
>
>
> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/queries-table-expressions.html#QUERIES-WINDOW
>
> Here's a simplified example:
>
> greg=# explain select count(*) over (partition by oid rows between 1000
> preceding and 1000 following),
> count(*) over (partition by oid rows between 1000 preceding and 1000
> following) from pg_class;
>                                            QUERY PLAN
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>  WindowAgg  (cost=0.28..60.87 rows=791 width=20)
>    ->  Index Only Scan using pg_class_oid_index on pg_class
>  (cost=0.28..49.00 rows=791 width=4)
> (2 rows)
>
> greg=# explain select count(*) over (partition by oid rows between 1000
> preceding and 1000 following),
> count(*) over (partition by oid rows between 1000 preceding and 9999
> following) from pg_class;
>                                               QUERY PLAN
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>  WindowAgg  (cost=0.28..72.73 rows=791 width=20)
>    ->  WindowAgg  (cost=0.28..60.87 rows=791 width=12)
>          ->  Index Only Scan using pg_class_oid_index on pg_class
>  (cost=0.28..49.00 rows=791 width=4)
>
> Cheers,
> Greg
>
> --
> Crunchy Data - https://www.crunchydata.com
> Enterprise Postgres Software Products & Tech Support
>
>

Commits

  1. Doc: improve description of window function processing.