Re: POC: GROUP BY optimization

Claudio Freire <klaussfreire@gmail.com>

From: Claudio Freire <klaussfreire@gmail.com>
To: Tomas Vondra <tomas.vondra@2ndquadrant.com>
Cc: Teodor Sigaev <teodor@sigaev.ru>, PostgreSQL-Dev <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2018-06-06T22:22:48Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers

Commits

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

  2. Rename PathKeyInfo to GroupByOrdering

  3. Add invariants check to get_useful_group_keys_orderings()

  4. Fix asymmetry in setting EquivalenceClass.ec_sortref

  5. Multiple revisions to the GROUP BY reordering tests

  6. Get rid of pg_class usage in SJE regression tests

  7. Rename index "abc" in aggregates.sql

  8. Explore alternative orderings of group-by pathkeys during optimization.

  9. Generalize the common code of adding sort before processing of grouping

  10. Fix out-dated comment in preprocess_groupclause()

  11. Force parallelism in partition_aggregate

  12. Optimize order of GROUP BY keys

On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 7:18 PM Claudio Freire <klaussfreire@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Comparison cost can be approximated probabilistically as:
> > >
> > > cost_comp = sum(cost_op_n * (1.0 / ndistinct(col_1_to_n)))
> > >
> > > Where cost_op_n is the cost of the comparison function for column N,
> > > and ndistinct(col_1_to_n) is an estimation of the number of distinct
> > > values for columns prior to N in the sort order.
> > >
> > > You can approximate ndistinct as the product of ndistinct of previous
> > > columns, or use extended statistics when available.
> > >
> >
> > Sure. The trouble is this also assumes uniform distribution, which is
> > not always the case.
>
> Well, (1.0 / ndistinct) = p(left == right).
>
> If you can compute a better p(left == right) with an MCV, you can get
> a better estimate. If you have an MCV. But that'd be a bit expensive,
> and I'm not sure it's all that relevant.
>
> To what degree does improving this produce better plans? As long as
> average expected cost is relatively well estimated (as in, one sort
> order relative to another sort order), it won't affect the decision.
>
> But if needed, the MCV can be used for this.
>
> So, in essence, you need to account for:
>
> - restrictions on that column that constrain the domain
> - distribution skew (MCV, nulls)
> - ndistinct
>
> To compute p(left == right).
>
> Maybe something as simple as the following?
>
> p_special = sum(mcv_i * mcv_i) + null_frac * null_frac
> p_other = (1 - p_special) * (1 - p_special) / ndistinct(restr)

Well, that came out with a slew of math errors, but the idea is clear:
compute p(left == right) given the available statistics and
constrained by any applicable restrictions.