Thread

Re: Relaxing constraints on BitmapAnd eligibility?

Dmytro Astapov <dastapov@gmail.com> — 2025-02-26T19:31:58Z

Hi!

I am (still) very unsure if the code change I mentioned will make sense,
but documentation chage could perhaps look like something along these lines?



Best regards, Dmytro


On Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 9:14 PM Dmytro Astapov <dastapov@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi!
>
> I've been investigating why postgres does not do BitmapAnd of two
> well-suited indexes, and reading indxpath.c
>
> In my case, there is a table (d date, col1 int, col2 int) -- types not
> really important -- and there are two indices on (d,col1) and (d, col2).
>
> For queries that do WHERE d>=X AND col1=Y AND col2=Z postgres will never
> BitmapAnd those two indices because both indexes include (d) and we have a
> condition on (d). Here is a full example, which could also be seen here:
> https://www.db-fiddle.com/f/uPLx5bRtDEoZw3Dx4kkwKh/0:
>
> begin;
>
> CREATE TABLE test_table (
>     d date,
>     col1 int,
>     col2 int
> );
>
> INSERT INTO test_table (d, col1, col2)
> SELECT
>     d.date,
>     c1.val as col1,
>     c2.val as col2
> FROM
>     generate_series(
>         '2023-01-01'::date,
>         '2023-12-31'::date,
>         '1 day'::interval
>     ) as d(date),
>     generate_series(1, 1000) as c1(val),
>     generate_series(1, 1000) as c2(val)
> WHERE
>     random() < 0.001;
>
> create index on test_table(col1,d);
> create index on test_table(col2,d);
>
> -- This uses BitmapAnd
> explain select * from test_table where col1=123 and col2=321;
>
> -- This does not use BitmapAnd, even though it could!
> explain select * from test_table where col1=123 and col2=321 and d >=
> '2023-05-05';
>
> I checked that BitmapAnd is rejected by this
> <https://github.com/postgres/postgres/blob/master/src/backend/optimizer/path/indxpath.c#L1878>
> line in choose_bitmap_and:
>
>    if (bms_overlap(pathinfo->clauseids, clauseidsofar))
>       continue; /* consider it redundant */
>
> There is a comment on choose_bitmap_and that explains the rationale of
> this check, but reading it I can't help but feel that what the comment
> describes is this condition:
>
>    if (bms_is_subset(pathinfo->clauseids, clauseidsofar))
>       continue; /* consider it redundant */
>
> And indeed, in my (admittedly not super-extensive) testing changing
> bms_overlap to bms_is_subset leads to better faster execution plans.
>
> Is it possible that this condition could thus be relaxed?
>
> Even if I am wrong, and the condition absolutely should be bms_overlap, I
> feel that this restriction is very very hard to discover and perhaps
> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/indexes-bitmap-scans.html should
> mention that compound indexes that have columns in common will never be
> combined?
>
> Best regards, Dmytro
>